Social Work with People Practicing Same-Sex ... - ILGA Europe

Of course, this diagram rather expresses the desired model, than a real situation.
However, many outreach projects are approaching this model by attracting their
partners to the provision of social follow-up and non-specific services (e.g., physicians
consultants from STI clinics).
Elements of the Outreach Work System
First of all, it is the outreach team consisting of at least four people, one of whom can
be the team leader. Several outreach workers will initially implement the instructions
of the leader, but in the mean time they will be able to set the tasks independently and
plan their outreach visits. The number of outreach workers should be conditioned by
the requirements to the safety of work.
The experts believe that an outreach team should include a psychologist, who may
perform the role of supervisor over outreach workers in the project, as it is necessary to
help outreach workers to resolve complex working situations. It is desirable to have a
physician consultant and the administrative staff (coordinator, accountant, monitoring
and evaluation specialist and system administrator) in the team.
Experts consider volunteers an ambiguous link the system of outreach work with
MSM. According to the employees of organizations working with MSM, the volunteer
system cannot adequately work in Ukraine due to a number
of reasons:
� The project life-cycle is short, the funding is limited
and the number of employees is fixed. Due to it the
volunteers do not have prospects of further employment
in a project.
� With a so high level of stigma that exists in Ukraine,
the powerful incentives, which are common in volunteer
practice, such as public approval, acquiring useful
experience for a future job, volunteer benefits for an
employment, etc., are not applicable in Ukraine.
� Weak links in the LGBT community that do not allow
increasing the prestige of a volunteer activity. So, the
experts believe that self-realization is the biggest
motivation for the volunteers to work with MSM. In spite of the complicated
conditions, experts still recognize the role of volunteers in the system of outreach
services. Although now it is not possible to make volunteering a systemic work,
they can be drawn to the group activities of the project when needed, and to
provide situational services, such as free legal consultations or attraction of
people to the so-called Popular Opinion Leader System 1 .
According to the experts, the no less important elements of the system of outreach
work with MSM are lists of organizations/data bases of organizations, services and
specialists to which they refer their clients. They should necessarily include the
lab diagnostic sites (for HIV and STI tests), psychological support services, social
workers, physicians, lawyers and crisis counsellors.
Some specialists consider that the needed elements of the outreach system should
include drop-in centres for MSM (or community centre), which could perform the
function of resource centre and temporary shelter for MSM. It is especially relevant
for big cities of Ukraine, because they experience an on-going MSM inflow from the
regions, who often run away from home or who were banished by their parents. Such
centre can serve as a temporary shelter that can provide additional health, social and
psychological services.
One of the possible elements may be a specialized sexual health clinic or gay clinic that
could be linked directly with the outreach work. As an option, outreach workers may
refer their clients not to separate specialists, but to such clinic, which would provide
comprehensive, MSM-friendly, specialist services.
Outreach work
1 Popular Opinion Leader System
means that people are involved in
the project where they receive the
needed basic knowledge and then
freely distribute it among their
socially close individuals when
they consider it important.
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