Living Safer Sexual Lives is a training pack available for purchase ($57.23) for those of you who may be doing training on human sexuality and disabilities. I have not personally used their materials, but it was developed in a very interesting way and it’s not very expensive so I thought I’d pass it along. A research group in Australia interviewed several people with intellectual disability about their sexual lives and then used their stories to develop this training. The training is targeted toward parents, professionals, and self advocates. The training pack has three parts: introduction, training, and resources (including a DVD of people with intellectual disability telling their stories).
You can read the full report which outlines the findings from the interviews and how they used the interviews to shape the training. The report also includes accounts from people with disabilities about their sexuality.
The key themes that emerged from the stories were:
- Diversity and similarity. Diversity within the lives of the story-tellers and similarities between needs and desires of this group and other adults.
- The issues of rights and sexuality.
- The hidden nature of people’s sexual lives.
- Celebration of sexuality and relationships.
- Gender issues.
- Loneliness and rejection.