This paper uses action research as a method of inquiry, showing that in the process of working with people living with HIV, the working method is shifted from assisted one-to-one interviews with psychology professionals to the role of social practitioners who are the families of people living with HIV.
This paper describes Xiaolong, a person living with HIV who has returned home, gambling her life by refusing to take medicine and as a complaint about social humiliation due to sexual orientation, infection, and drug use. However, this performative act instead of being directed towards society, Xiaolong's mother, the main carer for Xiaolong, felt the full force, obliterating Xiaolong's mother's feelings towards home and Xiaolong; and Xiaolong's mother's inner resentment, heartache, disappointment and worry, letting Xiaolong's mother's emotions, a consequence of pressure from multiple complex societies and cultures, explode onto Xiaolong, a homosexual HIV-infected drug addict who has been forced home due to stigma. As society extricates people to re-enter their home, causing the tragedy of family fights to happen right before our eyes. The mother of another person living with HIV, Mother Chan, developed different paths under different social conditions. In the practice of accompanying other infected people, she gradually clarified the social and cultural roles behind sexual orientation, infection and drug addiction.
It can be seen from this study that in the process of assisting the person living with HIV, including the families of the infected person is an important link in the process of assisting the person living with HIV. In terms of working methods, researchers act as practitioners, using action research, self-narratives, and epistemology that regards home as a social field, and trying to use the "all forces toward development" of social therapy theory to create a field of social field co-learning, synergistic people living with HIV develop their own multiple roles and multiple perspectives in the group.