Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

245a medical and administrative manner that militates against a more personalised,familial form of care.People like Alice receive the requisite medical care from the appropriatehealth care professionals, and are fed, cleaned and toileted as required by trainedprofessional carers. However, beyond these required tasks, she remains largelyinvisible as she sits silently by the window in her dining area, and is spoken overby therapists as she is taken to her room to receive the requisite five-minutehealth care intervention. She is, in effect, a non-person, 587 or, as Newell asserts ofthe medical discourse, the objectified other. 588 This is the one who is principallyrelated to by paid professionals on the basis of his or her disability anddeficiencies. As with Sally who is known ubiquitously as ‘that lady,’ Alice lackspersonal identification and regard.Such objectification is exacerbated by the inability of institutional staff tolook beyond seeing the person, as stated in relation to Henrietta, as more than the‘tip of the iceberg.’ Rather than seeing a whole person she is often seen purely interms of her present intellectual impairment. Instead of being understood in termsof her entire life that has led to this point in time she is perceived presently as anelderly woman with failing health, including increasing levels of dementia. Sucha narrow health care perspective means that a person such as Henrietta will not betreated as someone with an inherent worth and dignity, as someone deservingrespect, understanding and kindness.As social historian Rob Westcott states concerning the objectified nonpersonalcare offered by Australian institutions to people with disabilities in thelate twentieth century,There is little evidence that there was any more recognition late inthe last century of the need to be kind, caring, helpful, friendly,tolerant, respectful, and personally connected to people withdisability above all else, and to help people toward living anordinary life, than there was a hundred years before. Conditionswere immeasurably improved, but one cannot help feel that peoplewith disability were and still are perceived as different, assomehow sub-species of the human race, with all the negativeconsequences of that benevolent, professionally determineddistinction evident in their daily life. 589587 Goffman, Stigma, 18.588 Newell, "Disabling Health Systems," 13.589 Westcott, Rob. "Lives Unrealised: An Essay on Society's Responses to Disability – Part 2:The Australian Experience." Interaction 18, no. 2 (2004): 7-18, 15-16.