The following article is based on excerpts from a chapter by Theresia Paquet and David Ford in the upcoming book, ‘A Kind of Upside-downness’: Learning Disabilities, Friendship and Transformational Community Editors: Ian Randall, David F. Ford and Deborah Hardy Ford (to be published 2019). It describes our deep appreciation for and growing knowledge of the L’Arche community model of care, first founded by Jean Vernier in 1964.
I (Theresia Paquet) first became involved with the L’Arche Kent community (the first L’Arche community founded in the UK by Jean Vanier’s sister, Thérèse, in 1974) in the hope of finding a place for our brother Charl there, as there had been a place for Adam at Daybreak. Adam’s story is told in the book written by Henri Nouen about his experience in the L’Arche Daybreak community in Canada and in particular his transforming encounter with Adam, who had profound physical and learning disabilities. I sought to learn from L’Arche by becoming part of their community and as a deputy manager of one of their residential care homes for five people with learning disabilities in 2017-2018. Since then, together with my brother Werner Bäumker, we founded the care organisation Mannawell to take care of our brother Charl and other loved ones like him. Mannawell is now based in Cambridge, with the vision of caring for people with learning disabilities, inspired by L’Arche and our brother’s life. As Henri Nouwen did, I hope one day to write a book about my brother Charl’s story.
The question I have asked myself is, whether there is the possibility of a type of residential community for people with and without learning disabilities that integrates elements of classic L’Arche communities.
The inspiring aspect of L’Arche is that people come together because they want to be together: they choose to join communities knowing what the values, behaviour and expectations of that community are. It is the mystery of a Christian community being ‘drawn together’ not driven together, in the words of Henri Nouwen. They become a group of people bonded together with a vision to share life together with people with learning disabilities. “The togetherness of the Christian community is not the result of shared anger or anxiety; it grows from a deep sense of being called together to make God’s compassion visible in the concreteness of everyday living” (Henri Nouwen).
In the L’Arche model, the people who share living space are those cared for, and those whose professional work it is to care for them, as ‘live-in carers’. What if this sharing of the detail of everyday living, not just meals and social interaction, but day-to-day sharing of living space, is opened up to people who also have other missions and vocations in life?
Separating the residential element from the professional care element, in part or completely, opens up the possibility of having people with and without learning disabilities sharing life together (and living together) on a purely social rather than a professional basis. This would allow people who have other professional or spiritual missions and callings, or who are still studying or even retired, to choose to live together with people with learning disabilities. People from outside the home, on a professionally employed basis as care and support workers, would primarily meet the physical care and support needs of the people with learning disabilities. Would this encourage a commitment by people that is relational rather than contractual, as the part that needs to be contractual under current regulation (the personal care) would be separately provided?
This model of care delivery complements the current system of adult social care in the UK. There is a desire in the system to see a separation of professional and personal involvement between the ‘professional’ person employed to care and the person being cared for or supported. That makes the L’Arche message of interdependence – relationships that are centred on presence, mutuality and the importance of the vulnerability of both parties – difficult to encourage and celebrate openly in this system.
The potential of this model is that social interactions are protected from taking place when people who provide care are exhausted from their caring responsibilities. This can easily happen when staff teams are stretched in a social care system that is severely and increasingly underfunded. By reducing the responsibilities and physical care tasks of the people living together, more time, more space and more freedom are created to engage with the people with learning disabilities as friends would engage. Thus, the people with and without learning disabilities living in community can focus on investing in relationships that have the freedom to be mutual and interdependent. That there is social time for friendship and a concentration on celebration, prayer, meals, music, and time beyond work for relationships with people for their own sake.
Thus, the possibility of a type of residential community for people with and without learning disabilities that builds on elements of L’Arche has this advantage: it takes care of the person with learning disabilities, meeting their basic need for physical care and support, whilst building community around them that can meet their social and spiritual desires. The joy is that this opens up to them a circle of friendships and their own mission field of people whose lives they can touch with the message that each is, as all of us are, infinitely precious, created in the image of God, a gift to be treasured, embodying and able to reveal the beauty and love of God.