ABSTRACT
Policy is an essential infrastructural component of social work. Policy constructs the parameters, such as eligibility for services and benefits, those included or excluded, and what is permitted and prohibited, within which social work is practiced. Public and social policy has long attempted to address how we relate to one another in an orderly, considerate, legal and respectful way. Policies inevitably gravitate toward the normative notions of our existence and our interrelationships with cisgender and heteronormative overtones. This chapter features a queer liberationist, socio-political analysis to decontextualize the policy development process, critically examining the limited approaches taken. The systemic and structural consequences for those who fall outside binary expectations and the norm, such as the LGBTQ populations, end up costing the system even more. Approaching policy design and development utilizing a gender and sexually diverse lens, including identity and non-identity-based perspectives, would provide for a more inclusive way of creating policy that reflects the gender and sexual diversity of society. Social workers, whether as policy makers themselves or not, have the power to advocate for change within policy to better address the needs of those we are serving.
