Community Cleavages: Gay and Bisexual Men’s Perceptions of Gay and Mainstream Community Acceptance in the Post-AIDS,Post-Rights Era

Changes in gay and bisexual men’s connectedness to the gay community are related to the declining public visibility of HIV/AIDS and greater acceptance for homosexuality and bisexuality in mainstream society. Little work, however, has focused on perceived acceptance for subgroups within the gay community or broader society. Using interviews (n = 20) and a survey (n = 202) of gay and bisexual men in a mid-sized Canadian city, we find perceived hierarchies of acceptance for the various subgroups as well as an age effect wherein middle-aged men perceive the least acceptance for all groups. These differences are linked with the uneven impact of social, political, and institutional changes relevant to gay and bisexual men in Canada.     

Administrative Justice and Charging for Long-term Care

Correspondence to Greta Bradley, School of Nursing, Social Work and Applied Health Studies, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull HU6 7RX, UK. E-mail: M.E.Bradley{at}hull.ac.uk Summary Drawing on the findings of a study in the area of charging forlong-term care for older people, this article makes links betweenperceptions and practices of local authority professionals andthe concept of administrative justice. The research revealedthat discretion was exercised at all levels, although not allstaff were aware of this. Cases may be treated differently andaccidents of geography, local political culture or personnelare likely to affect the outcome of financial assessments ofadults. The implications of this work remain timely since meanstested assessment of personal care and residency costs lookset to continue in England and Wales.     

The elusive market: Embeddedness and the paradigm of economic sociology

Theory and Society -     

Evaluating a social work introductory programme

Many social work programmes spend considerable time at the end of the course consolidating learning experiences, looking to employment issues, the nature of supervisory contracts, future training needs and so on (see for example the Janus week at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen). On a social level students also experience a round of parties, a graduation ceremony, the collection of certificates and formal farewells. Such activities are fairly predictable rites of passage. Whilst the importance of beginnings in social work practice is part of the folklore, little has been said or written about the actual process of induction onto social work training programmes. In this article we focus on the beginning of such a programme leading to an award of MA and Diploma in Social Work. We analyse what happens, describe the structures and under-pinning theories and conclude by arguing that the start of a course is an important land-mark for students' relationships with each other, with teaching staff and their own self-perceptions and sense of empowerment. Our reflection on these processes has been useful in looking at the conscious and unconscious messages given by ourselves and our institution.

Firstly, we briefly explore perspectives emanating from broad sociological discourse about the nature of professionalisation. We can then reflect on the perspective of anthropology which raises useful notions of initiation, celebration and ritual. We are particularly interested in looking at the power relationship between staff and students and at learning styles. Theory therefore demands that we look at this introduction in other than mechanistic or rational ways.

The second part of this article considers a three day introduction to a social work programme, concentrating on styles of learning and the inherent issues of power relationships.     

Parents' retrospective reports of youth psychological responses to the sniper attacks in the Washington, DC, area

A random-digit-dial telephone survey was conducted in May 2003, with 355 parents of children ages 2-17 years old, living in Washington, DC, or in the two surrounding counties during the October 2002 sniper shootings, to examine parent retrospective reports of child event-related psychological distress. An estimated 32% of parents reported that children experienced at least one psychological distress symptom related to sniper shootings. Older children, females, children with a history of trauma exposure prior to sniper attacks, children whose parents reported routine disruption as the result of attacks, children whose parents perceived them as at great risk for harm from sniper attacks, and those children whose parents reported more traumatic stress symptoms in response to attacks were at greatest risk for reported psychological distress.