Are you saying that the care and justice systems are oppressive to the mentally ill as a group?
In the situation you describe, I can agree, some people can not take care of themselves on their own in the sense of taking part of the franchise of society. If they're in the care system, they're actively "under the boot" or denied the right to forge their own destiny by a power structure that has seized control over their life. They're lucky to have you, and that your advocacy is part of that system. But because they're still under systemic control, is it fair to say they can't empower themselves when the process of empowerment has had not time to occur naturally and they're still under a controlling force if power?
Isn't that a little outside what Rappaport was talking about though? I admit I haven't read all of his work, very little in fact. You know how I feel about some of the tangents psychology and sociology have taken. But from what I have read, he was talking about what happens to a people, not a person. So unless we're claiming that all mentally ill persons are shunted away from society and prevented from engaging in the franchise based solely on the fact that they're mentally ill, they would be excluded from what he was talking about. But that's not right, because we know there are degrees and types of mental illness. Some are dangerous to themselves and others, some have a chromosomal abnormality and are quite capable of holding a job and learning to take care of themselves. Yes, it takes more effort and longer than average usually, and they may need a hand throughout their lives, but so what? So does everyone else. If you look at it like that, were all empowering each other all the time.
When you used the term modelling, you were talking about teaching someone something they either missed or wasn't available to them for whatever reason during the time frame that everyone else got that skillset. Is that the same as being denied it particularly in order to disadvantage you for the benefit of someone else.
When we talk about exploitation and oppression, that's generally what it boils down to. Disenpowerment of a group of people based on some arbitrary thing to benefit others, held in place by systemic power structures.
