Building Competence in Practice with the Polyamorous Community: A Scoping Review

The landscape of relationships, gender, and sexuality continues to change rapidly across the world. This includes recognition of relationship styles such as polyamory, in which individuals have multiple romantic relationships with the knowledge and consent of all involved. In the academic literature on polyamory, social work perspectives are noticeably absent. Thus, a scoping review concerning social work, counseling, and polyamory was conducted to assess knowledge from the last decade and to contribute to the field. The themes that arose were the need for clinicians to examine their biases toward monogamy and polyamory, including perceptions of insecure attachment and a lack of commitment in polyamorous relationships. The literature also recognizes that polyamorous individuals often have fluid identities and sexual orientations. Finally, social workers have a duty to create a safe environment for polyamorous clients because of widespread societal stigma. As social work values client self-determination and examination of societal discourses, the field would benefit from further research into polyamory; this article is just the beginning.