Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

110out between staff and residents who work and live in that facility. 300 In 1967Niels Bank-Mikkelsen also highlighted the effect of institutional architecture,calling for designs that enhanced rather than regulated and inhibited the lives ofthose with intellectual disabilities. 301In 1969 Bengt Nirje described the nature of institutional routine in souldestroying,mechanistic terms:Large institutions and the conditions we can observe in their backwards can never offer facilities of the kind and quality that areessential. In the large wards, the rhythm of the day reduces theretarded to an object in an empty, machinelike atmosphere ... notintegrated with a meaningful personal experience ... monotonousconfinement. 302In offering such critique Nirje was advocating for institutional residents toreceive living conditions that approximated those in mainstream society. 303The likes of Bank-Mikkelsen were also calling into question the longstandingprotectionist nature of institutions in regards to the people withdisabilities who they accommodated. In claiming that institutions regarded the‘mentally retarded’ as children, although they were adults, a protectionist attitudeby the institution towards its accommodated people was generated andmaintained. The loss of civil rights arising from this societal and institutionalattitude towards people with disabilities is noted by Bank-Mikkelsen. Hedescribed the negative discriminatory policy in which the "mentally retardedwere segregated on the general principle of protecting them against anunsympathetic attitude from the community, and of protecting the communityagainst the mentally retarded." 304 Such a mutually protectionist attitude hearkensback to the post-Renaissance period. At that time those deemed ‘mad’ were kept300 For example, the Highgate wing of the then Home for Incurables, latterly named HighgatePark, was constructed in 1977 along the lines of a hospital ward with the nursing bay as acentral feature.301 Bank-Mikkelsen, "The Growth and Development of a New Administration," 49.302 Nirje, "The Normalization Principle," 368.303 ibid., 363.Here Nirje is advocating for a system of social normalisation which he defines as the meansof “making available to the mentally retarded patterns and conditions of everyday life whichare as close as possible to the norms and patterns of the mainstream of society.”304 Bank-Mikkelsen, "The Growth and Development of a New Administration for theMentally Retarded," 41.