Abstract

Traditional models of care as experienced by persons with intellectual disabilities tend to be unidirectional and create a power relationship between caregiver and patient. The relatively new theoretical concept of mutual care provides a way of breaking down the existing power relation between caregiver and patient to make way for a more integrative model, namely care as partnership. In this ethnography, I examine the relationships between conventional caregivers and patients in the context of L’Arche, a community of people with and without intellectual disabilities founded on the notion of mutuality in relationships across differences. Recording the varying experiences of care lived by members of the L’Arche community of Il Chicco in Rome illuminates the risks and benefits involved in mutual care while highlighting the numerous factors that impact the possibility and success of its application in the Italian context.