Interviewing

A social worker enters the room. He is black, and I guess him to be in his late fifties. He looks at me suspiciously for I am a stranger within his domain, his place of work. “Hello,” I say, and he replies, “Hello.” He now looks less suspicious, more friendly, but still he does not know who I am. At least, this is what I think to myself, but then maybe he does know, for he knows that I am coming to his office, this gay man who is researching lesbians and gay men who foster or adopt. “I’m Steve,” I say, “...I’m the person who’s looking at lesbians and gay men who foster or adopt. You’ll have seen the letter from me...” “Oh yes,” he says. We’re awkward but amiable. I wonder what he thinks of me, of my sort. No doubt I’ve already formed several impressions of him, his difference from me. He still hasn’t told me his name, and then he says, “I’m Wayne, I’m on the adoption team, you’re seeing me later.” “I know,” I say, for I have a detailed schedule which tells me when I’m seeing him. He introduces me to his two young daughters who happen to visit him at the office.

Later, it is time for ‘the interview’. He’s a bit late, “very busy,” he says. We sit in a small side room and I explain to him a little more about the research project. I ask him whether it’s okay to tape-record the interview and he says this is fine. I turn on the tape-recorder, checking for the pulsating red lights that show the recording levels. As usual, this creates a boundary, the idea that ‘the interview proper’ has now started. Initially we are nervous but I ask him easy questions to begin with. He’s brought some assessment forms with him to help explain some of the process to me.

I begin to notice how he’s saying things as much as what he’s saying. He has some problems with the words ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’, preferring ‘homosexual’ but more often phrases which refer to ‘it’ without actually saying ‘it’. Antagonism begins to creep in on my part, but I decide to remain calm and put my questions to him politely. He settles down, forgets about the tape, and begins to tell me what he really thinks about gay people and the idea of their caring for children. He suggests several times that sexuality is no big deal and that social workers are perfectly fine with it. “He means that I’m making it a big deal,” I think.

to counter his arguments with other perspectives. Nevertheless my overriding thought is this: “How come he feels so comfortable in putting me down?” “He’s black,” I think to myself in a white liberal kind of way, “surely he understands about oppression?” But, unlike the black women I’ve spoken to so far, he chooses not to make any links across race and sexuality. Instead he keeps going on about the heterosexual ‘norm’ and telling me examples from his own life which fit with this; his marriage, his wife, his children, how lesbian and gay people are always so uppity. “I’m a threat,” I think, “he’s being polite - ‘professional’ even - but he hates me and my kind.”

My data substantively consists of the results of interviews with a cohort of twenty- eight social workers from three local authority fostering and adoption units. 'South River Council' is an inner-London authority which has a unit divided into a

fostering team and an adoption team. Here I spoke to seven workers; one senior and six social workers, one of whom was a locum worker6. At the time that I visited, October 1994, South River Council had one gay male couple doing fostering. 'North River Council' is a larger inner-London borough and has a fostering and adoption unit which is made up of four teams; under 11s fostering, over 11s fostering, a permanency team (generally adoption, but some long-term fostering) and a leaving-care team. Here I spoke to eleven workers; the children’s

care services manager, two team managers, an equalities officer, and seven social workers. At the time that I visited, April 1995, North River Council had two gay male couples and a single lesbian fostering children over eleven, and a gay male couple registered with the leaving care team. The 'North Eastern Council' is a large metropolitan authority in the north of England. Its unit is divided into three teams; a 0-8 years team, a 9-plus team, and an initial response team dealing with all enquiries and referrals. Here I spoke to ten workers, all social workers on the teams. At the time that I visited, March 1996, the North Eastern Council had a single gay man doing emergency (short-term) fostering, and a lesbian couple fostering for the 9-plus team.

I chose to employ interviewing as a method because, primarily, I was interested to find out how social workers made sense of the categories ‘lesbian’ or ‘gay’ in relation to the potential to foster or adopt children. Epistemologically, I reasoned that, in order to generate data on such interpretations, experiences and

understandings, I needed to talk to the social workers so that I could record their accounts (Mason 1996:40). Nevertheless I was aware that interviews are re- countings of events, and that meanings would be achieved between myself and the interviewee in each and every contextually-dependent situation.

I did not want to use either survey-based data or observational data. I felt that a survey would not allow me to pick apart the constructions of meanings attaching to such concepts as ‘lesbian’, ‘gay’, or ‘carer’, and I also decided that, in

dialogue, I might be more able to encourage the social workers to discuss any reservations they might have about lesbians and gay men caring

for children. As I have previously noted, I was also interested to investigate ‘micro’-levels of social work practice with lesbians and gay men, far more than any global picture about a comparative study of agencies across the country. I wanted to get to what the social workers felt they had done in their practice when assessing lesbian or gay applicants and I did not think that a survey would

provide me with such data. Observing social work assessments in action was not an option for me anyway, since agencies would not allow this. But I was also very wary of the idea that, if I had ‘observed it’, it would somehow be more ‘truthful’. Observations ‘in the field’ are still interpretations of what is happening by the researcher (Clifford & Marcus 1986).

Having decided to pursue interviewing as a method, I then had to make decisions about where to conduct the research. I wanted to speak to social workers in local authority fostering and adoption units because they handle the vast majority of fostering and adoption work, while a small amount is handled by voluntary

agencies (Triseliotis et al. 1995, 1997). In thinking about which local authorities to approach, I had to bear a number of factors in mind:

• I wanted to approach at least one agency with a ‘radical’ reputation; by this I

mean a local authority with explicit statements of equal opportunities which included lesbians and gay men, and preferably one which had either

participated in the Skeates & Jabri (1988) study and/or had something of a national reputation for being ‘politically correct.’ My reasons for this were that I wanted to research in at least one authority about which commonsense

notions were that ‘there was no discrimination against lesbians and gay men’ within that agency.

• I wanted to approach at least one inner-London borough, partly for the

reasons outlined above, but also because I felt that some of the London boroughs had developed more experiences of working with lesbians and gay men through anti-oppressive work carried out via equalities initiatives in the 1980s and under the Greater London Council (Greater London Council 1985; Greater London Council Women’s Committee 1986).

• I wanted to ensure that I spoke to black, as well as white, social workers; that I

spoke to both fostering and adoption workers; and that I spoke to at least some men (most social workers being women).

• I wanted to approach at least one agency which had a good ‘reputation’

amongst the lesbian and gay communities, especially those involved in fostering and adoption.

• I wanted to ensure that I spoke to some lesbian and gay social workers

because I was very interested to see whether their experiences were markedly different from those of heterosexuals.

• In contrast to the London boroughs, I wanted to approach an agency in the

north of England since I had been aware that the Skeates & Jabri (1988) study had a London-bias. I already knew that my case study (chapter six) would

draw upon data from two further authorities, one in the north of England and one in the Midlands.

• I was not interested to do a ‘macro-level’, large-scale comparative study of

agencies across the country; as I have previously noted, I was not interested in the ‘good authorities versus bad authorities’ version of social work practice. Instead I decided to focus on a small number of agencies but to try to interview a fairly large number of workers (in the end, twenty-eight).

• I was also mindful of the practicalities of access (Burgess 1984; Lee 1993),

which I shall discuss later. I felt that my research topic was likely to be a sensitive issue (Lee 1993; Renzetti & Lee 1993) for local authorities and so I was unsure as to whether I would be able to persuade agencies to give me permission to carry out the research, let alone whether social workers themselves would actually talk to me.

This presented me, pragmatically, with the issue of access to willing research sites and subjects, and achieving this relied upon a combination of factors. First, I was able to secure ‘sponsors’ (Lee 1993:131) for each site. By this I mean that I was able to develop a contact with a worker in each authority who was

supportive of my research, and, more importantly, acted as an advocate for the research project. These three women - a lesbian who worked as an equalities officer for social services, a heterosexual woman who was a fostering social worker, and a lesbian who was a fostering social worker - were central to negotiating access to do the research and I think crucial to the research

happening at all. Finding them was the result of a combination of my existing contacts through earlier research, my involvement with lesbian and gay fostering and adoption support networks, and some degree of serendipity. All three met with some suspicion about the project from colleagues, and some stated resistance. There were always some social workers in each of the authorities who refused to speak with me, often the case with ‘sensitive’ research topics (Lee 1993:122).

Second, I had to work hard to negotiate access myself. I spoke with senior

managers and entered into correspondences about the research project. In each case, negotiating access took a period of six months from the point of initial contact to the point at which I was able to visit the authority. I met with some suspicions about my motives, but I found that I was able to reassure managers and workers by sending them detailed outlines of the research project. Their main concerns were that I would expose the practices of authorities or individual workers to hostile scrutiny, ridicule or even media attention, and so it was

important that I made careful negotiations around confidentiality and also explained the content and purpose of my interviews.

I found that I had to do some ‘reassurance’-work here, emphasising that I was not out to ‘trap’ or ridicule individual workers. Reports back from my ‘sponsors’ indicated that the most frequent concerns of the social workers were that I would be disparaging about their attempts to assess lesbian and gay applicants, or that

I would not think them ‘right-on’ enough. This raised the issue of potential

interviewees feeling possibly intimidated by the prospect of talking to a gay man about assessing lesbian and gay applicants, and the idea that they would have to be ‘politically correct’ in what they said. As I will discuss, I did not find this to be the case when doing the interviews.

I ‘reassured’ potential research subjects by outlining my project and the content of interviews. I made it clear that the purpose of the interviews would be to find out their views and how they had handled assessments of lesbians and gay men, whatever their position on this topic. I found that the fact that I was also a social worker at the time that I did the research7 made a big difference. I was able to emphasize that I saw social work as a complex and difficult activity without ‘easy answers’, and this helped greatly with access to willing subjects - they saw me as ‘one of them’ on this level at least.

Of the twenty-eight respondents, 22 were women and 6 men; 5 were lesbians, none were gay men and 23 were heterosexual; 6 were black and 22 white (of whom one was Jewish); none were disabled; 17 worked in fostering, 7 in

adoption and 4 were managers. I did find that adoption workers were consistently more likely to refuse to participate in the study than were fostering workers.

7 _{I was employed as a Social Worker (Job-Share) for children under eleven and their families at a}

voluntary project in Manchester. I worked half-time (I couldn’t have done the PhD if I’d been a full- time social worker!), doing children and families work, including child protection.