Identifying and developing inclusive policy and practice responses to health and social inequities in gender and sexually diverse persons require inclusive research ethics and methods in order to develop sound data. This article articulates 12 ethical principles for researchers undertaking gender and sexually diverse social, health, and related research. We have called these the ‘Montréal Ethical Principles for Inclusive Research.’ While writing from an international social work perspective, our aim is to promote ethical research that benefits people being researched by all disciplines. This paper targets four groups of interest: 1. Cisgender and heterosexual researchers; 2. Researchers who research ‘general’ populations; 3. and sexually diverse researchers; 4. Human ethics committees. This article was stimulated by the 2018 Global Social Work Statement of Ethical Principles, which positions human dignity at its core. It is critically important to understand and account for the intersectionality of gender and sexuality with discourses of race, ethnicity, colonialism, dis/ability, age, etc. Taking this intersectionality into consideration, this article draws on scholarship that underpins ethical principles developed for other minoritized communities, to ensure that research addresses the autonomy of these participants at every stage. Research that positions inclusive research ethics at its foundation can provide a solid basis for policy and practice responses to health and social inequities in gender and sexually diverse persons.

The social work profession struggles to engage with sexuality under the anti-oppressive banner as deftly as it does with other types of social difference, such as ethnicity, age, class and gender. Despite recent theorising and empirical work about sexuality in social work, little is known about social workers’ perceptions, knowledge and values about sexuality in contemporary professional practice. This exploratory study is the first to examine social workers’ beliefs and values about sexuality in relation to everyday professional interactions within the UK. It aims to better account for the ways in which sexuality is constructed and understood within interactions with colleagues and clients. Utilisation of an online survey instrument examined 112 respondents’ perceptions about sexuality, incorporating the Heteronormativity Attitudes and Beliefs Scale (Habarth, 2015) and open-ended questions exploring how social workers acquire knowledge about sexuality. Respondents were qualified social workers from Wales, England and Scotland. Findings suggest that some respondents ‘bracketed’ values to manage between professional and personal identities. We found a relationship between social workers’ religiosity and investment in heteronormative beliefs. Implications for delivery of services to social work clients and practitioners’ learning needs are discussed.

Leadership is a frequently used term, but these uses include various definitions and applications; these uses are sometimes contradictory. This definitional vagueness can be a particular challenge for professions, including social work. In comparison to other similar professions, there is a lack of leadership knowledge generation in social work. In addition, the organisational context in England has been challenging in recent decades, likely hindering development and application of leadership models. Health care has a broader empirical and conceptual development of leadership as a topic of examination. In health care literature, compassionate leadership is gaining momentum as a useful way of developing good clinical leadership. There is a strong tradition in social work of engaging with compassion as an element of social work values. We present models of compassionate leadership and consider their usefulness for the current social work knowledge base. We suggest that compassionate leadership may prove useful for social work practice and academia.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning (LGBTQ+) young people are overrepresented in out-of-home social care and face significant physical health, mental health and well-being inequalities compared with their non-LGBTQ+ peers. Their residential care experiences have been missing from the knowledge base, with no prior in-depth published research in the UK. Theoretically informed by an intersectional minority stress framework and combining qualitative and co-production methodologies, this study produced a nuanced understanding of the residential care experiences of LGBTQ+ young people. We interviewed twenty young people (sixteen–twenty-four years old) in England with a broad range of LGBTQ+ and multiple intersecting minority identities. We analysed data using reflexive thematic analysis, producing four themes: widespread discrimination and marginalisation; unmet mental and sexual health needs; importance of affirming professional relationships and resilience and self-relying strategies. Findings suggest that multiple minority identities magnified young people’s challenges. Combining the findings with our systematic scoping review developed an explanatory model which provides a dynamic understanding of (un)supportive or (dis)affirming residential care environments. Implications for policy, practice and research include LGBTQ+ inclusive policies and services, mandatory competency-based training combined with ongoing reflexive supervisory practice and incorporating the voices of LGBTQ+ young people in service delivery.

Within social work practice and research, sexual relationships, desires and activities can be the subject of intense assessment and intervention, or disregarded and overlooked as intrinsic social dimensions of human relationships and well-being ( Dunk-West, 2011). The social work profession can struggle to engage with sexuality, as it can with other sources of social difference and identity, such as ethnicity, class and gender. This struggle is likely to create inequality in the construction and delivery of services to service users, and to create fissures in students’ learning about working with and against social differences and divisions. It also negates the broader international recognition of human sexuality as ‘a central aspect of being human throughout life [which] encompasses sex, gender identities and roles, sexual orientation, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy and reproduction’ ( World Health Organisation, 2006). Discussions of sexual pleasure and intimacy receive scant attention in social work scholarship despite its recognised significance to human relationships, as identified in the above working definition. Further to this, Weeks argues that sexuality is fundamental to individual notions of self and identity: ‘Through it, we experience ourselves as real people; it gives us our identities, our sense of self, as men and women, as heterosexual and homosexual, ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’ or ‘unnatural’’ (2003, p. 3).