Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

142situations.” 389 Therefore, institutional care, with its criteria-basedconceptualisation of care, imposes such constraints on the nature of relationshipsbetween its professional staff and those for whom they bear responsibility.As McKnight argues, an institutional conceptualisation of care regards thepeople served as clients, and therefore as deficient people in need of constantprofessional intervention. The giving of such care inevitably results in therecipients becoming dependent on the care providers. 390 This inextricably leads tothe exercising of power within the institutional environment by professional stafftowards their clients. The use of power relates back to the conceptualisation ofcare as requiring accredited expertise. People with specific professionalcategorizations of expertise are required to appropriately implement their rolewith those who are seen to be in need. These people are regarded as not havingthe expertise to maintain or restore their own care-related requirements. Such anexercising of power maintains clients in a position of care dependency and thus,as Barton describes, situated in a “syndrome of submissiveness.” 391Given the professional status of pastoral carers such as chaplains and theaccredited nature of the care they offer to those accommodated in the institutionalcontext it needs to be acknowledged that chaplains too have the capacity toexercise their specific area of care expertise in such a way as to createdependency. This can occur when the professional pastoral carer fails toacknowledge and address issues concerning their own need for care, as well aswhen the professional carer fails to respect the need of the other to be nurtured asan autonomous human being.The question then asked is what shape professional pastoral care shouldtake. Given the diversity of care offered by carers ranging from family care to thecare of doctors and psychologists, what is the unique and distinguishingcontribution that professionally-offered pastoral care can provide to thoseaccommodated in the institutional context?Such a question calls for reconsideration of what it means to be aprofessional pastoral carer. Disability educator and advocate Bill Gaventa stakesa claim for the professional carer to reconsider the nature of their role with those389 Browning, A Fundamental Practical Theology, 189.390 McKnight, The Careless Society, 122-23.391 Barton, Institutional Neurosis, 3.