Symbolic violence against a person with intellectual disability in a nursing home care

Abstract

The system of institutional support should be tailored to the needs and capabilities of the persons using it, ensuring full social development. However, institutional care involves tearing the individual out of real social life, isolating him or her and imposing actions that lead to a specific change. The approach of professionals focuses on restoring a state of normality to people with disabilities at all costs or takes the form of neglecting the needs of the individual through an infantile approach to them. The aim of this paper is to present the results of research on the reconstruction of experiences and interpretations of the experience of symbolic violence by people with intellectual disabilities residing in social welfare homes. The research presented in this paper is set in the interpretative paradigm, which consequently allowed the application of the biographical method with the use of autobiographical narrative interview. The analysis of the empirical material reveals various forms of symbolic violence. Some are the result of imposed assistance, i.e., the system of social policy, which in its essence does not take into account the individual needs and possibilities of the individual. Systemic assumptions condemn narrators to certain actions and behaviours. Symbolic violence is also evident in the relationships between the staff of the institutions and the residents, which results, among other things, in anxiety, a sense of being inferior and insecurity.