Legal, social and attitudinal changes: an exploration of lesbian and gay issues in a training programme for social workers in fostering and adoption

Within a widely evolving political, social and legal climate, significant changes have taken place in the last 10 years in relation to lesbians and gay men. This has presented social workers and social work teams with new challenges in ensuring their practice adheres to recent legislation, government policy and guidance. In order to address these issues a local authority approached the authors to commission a training programme to increase awareness of lesbian and gay issues in a fostering and adoption context for social work practitioners and managers. This paper presents an outline of this one-day training programme and considers how effective one-day training courses can be in bringing about changes in attitudes and skills in relation to this complex area of practice.