Blog - Disliking Someone Who Has Learning Difficulties

Some people who happen to have learning difficulties, are horrible people.

That feels like a controversial thing to say, but I don't think it should be. Equality sometimes has its bad points.

When people find out what my job is they either look at me blankly and move swiftly on, or they say "That must be so rewarding." This annoys me if I've had a bad day at work. So I tend to tell them that sometimes it is, but that I personally don't like one or two of my clients. Most of the time I get a horrified look, as if to say "You can't say that!" Now,either they mean that I can't say that because I'm a professional so I have to like all my clients (obviously I never show if I don't like them. That's part of professionalism. But nobody can make themselves like everyone they meet.).Or, they mean that I can't say that about people with learning difficulties. To which I reply "People with learning difficulties can be just as mean or obnoxious as people without."

I tried to find an advert I saw a while ago because I wanted to link it here - it shows a group of people sitting around a pub table, one of them is being massively rude and unpleasant and the other people look like they wished he wasn't there. Then the camera  pans out to show that he's sitting in a wheelchair, and a caption appears on the screen about how people with disabilities can be unpleasant too. I really appreciated that advert.

If we believe in equality, and if part of being equal is being treated equally, then every person should be treated like a person. People can be kind, cruel, generous, manipulative, you name it. And so can people who happen to have a physical disability, mental health issue, or learning difficulty.

The big problem here though is figuring out whether the person is responsible for their behaviour - those who are not should be treated with more kindness when they are, for example, trampling over everyone around them and behaving like nobody else's feelings matter.

But what does it mean to be responsible for your actions? With some people this is really hard to figure out. There are a few clients I have worked with for years that I am still unsure as to whether their incredibly unpleasant demeanour is something they are morally responsible for.

I've been asking people on twitter what it means to be morally responsible. The answers I've gotten back have mostly boiled down to this: You are morally responsible for your actions if you have some understanding of your actions and their consequences, including the fact that your actions affect other people. You also need to have had a choice of which action to take, and the understanding that you had a choice. Although as someone pointed out, it is really hard to figure out what it is that a person understands. We can't rely on what people say, we need to think about their behaviour too.

As imperfect as this definition is, I think it's a start. It has helped me feel a bit better about the fact that I've had a few clients in the past that I really didn't like supporting. They treated people around them really badly, and I was sure that I knew them well enough to know that they were responsible for that behaviour. When it comes to situations like this, I don't think we should just excuse it 'because they have learning difficulties'. They have the same rights and responsibilities as everyone else, and that includes the moral responsibility to treat others well.

~ Sally Forth

p.s. If you have any thoughts on responsibility, please let me know. These thoughts are a work in progress.