Available for Purchase

These curriculum have been developed by different groups and are available for purchase through the organizations’ website.

Mad Hatter Wellness

/ Sarah Durante

Mad Hatter Wellness is a company that creates comprehensive sexual health programs that teach and empower people with intellectual disabilities. Their curriculum Sexuality for All Abilities, contains activities and lessons that cover many different topics regarding sexuality and relationships. This is a holistic program that combines mindfulness techniques to address sexuality topics and provides a safe environment that ensures growth and learning. They offer a student and an adult option of the curriculum and can be purchased for $375 at the link below.

Curriculum

On top of this, Mad Hatter Wellness also sells other tools to help teach and practice topics that are covered in the curriculum. Their Boundaries Flip Book that form sentences regarding boundaries. It created discussion for healthy boundaries, as well as highlights what is okay and what isn’t, and when these behaviors are appropriate. On top of this, they also have a Family Discussion Guide, which offers activities, information, and discussion questions that will help families discuss healthy relationships and boundaries. In addition to these, they offer self-paced online courses, and more physical resources that can be used to implement the curriculum.

Oak Hill Positive Choices

/ Sarah Durante

Oak Hill Center for Relationship and Sexuality Education (CRSE) looks to educate and increase access to important sexual health information through various preventative programs. They also aim to decrease the vulnerability to sexual abuse that the intellectual/developmental disability community endures. They offer different curriculums, workbooks, parent/caregiver workshops, professional development workshops and therapeutic education.

Their most recent curriculum, Positive Choices, is designed for secondary students and aims to improve critical judgement about sexual health and relationship safety. On top of this, students will learn life skills, safe boundaries, women’s and men’s health, healthy relationships, and sexuality. This curriculum can be purchased on the Oak Hills website and costs $430. The teacher’s manual can be purchased for $180, and the student workbook is $25. Information is linked below: http://relationshipandsexuality.oakhillct.org/positive-choices/

Open Future Learning

/ Sarah Durante

Open Future Learning is a company that offers a wide variety of online training for staff, or anyone else working with individuals with disabilities. They offer modules in abuse prevention, communication, advocacy, and many more topics. They have staff training modules, 30 minute programs, and an audio learning module. Membership can range from $112-$2263 per month, depending on the amount of active users. Linked below is Open Future’s Homepage.

https://www.openfuturelearning.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=login.home

Teen Talk Adapted for All Abilities

/ Sarah Durante

Health Connection is a company that designs sex education curriculum for teachers. Teen Talk: Adapted for All Abilities is an adaptation of their Teen Talk curriculum, and is designed to cater to 7th to 12th grade students with disabilities. This is an adaptation of This curriculum focuses on tolerance, respect, and personal values articulation. It addresses topics like sexuality, gender roles, and reproductive healthcare. This curriculum also uses gender inclusive language. The Adapted for All Abilities can be purchased for $345 (plus tax). You can find more information at the link below:

https://www.health-connected.org/teen-talk-aaa

Elevatus Training: Online and In-Person Training to be a Sexuality Educator

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Elevatus offers a variety trainings staff, direct support professionals, educators, self-advocates and parents to teach sexuality education to children and adults with developmental disabilities. In addition to their trainings, Elevatus has a sex education curriculum that can be purchased.

Here are examples of some of their trainings and the costs:

  • For Staff and Professionals – Developmental Disabilities and Sexuality 101 ($397)
  • For Parents/Guardians – Talking With Your Kids: Developmental Disability and Sexuality ($47)
  • In-service/live workshops and a 3-Day Certificate Training ($725) for anyone who wants to lead sexuality education classes with people with developmental disabilities.

To get more information about Elevatus Training:-https://www.elevatustraining.com/

Friendship & Dating Program: Helping Children and Adults to Acquire Relationship Skills

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The Friendships & Dating Program (FDP) offers inclusive teaching plans for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. A unique aspect of this program is its emphasis on preventing interpersonal violence. There is a version of this program for youth with serious emotional disturbance. The FDP focuses on skill development through experimental learning and group activities with an interactive 10-week curricular plan. Interested groups can purchase the curriculum on its own ($600) or purchase the curriculum in combination with a train the trainer support provided live online ($1,800). You can find more information about the FDP from the below link. Some module illustrations are available on the website.

https://www.fdprogram.org/

Healthy Realationships and Autism

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healthy relationships and autismA new curriculum called “Healthy Relationships and Autism” is now available from Wesley Spectrum (a behavioral health organization with several locations in the Pittsburgh, PA area). It was designed to teach skills to adolescents and young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder or cognitive challenges in the areas of self care, sexuality, and relationship development.  Their website has an example lesson to help you determine if it would be right for your students.  They do not publish their pricing information (you have to email them for more information but they will send you a sample packet).

I have not used this curriculum but there is some evidence of it’s effectiveness.  A study published in School and Educational Psychology evaluated this program with six students.  These students showed increases in sexual knowledge which they retained one month after completing the class.

PEERS Program

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The Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS) was originally developed at UCLA by Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson, Founder and Director of the UCLA PEERS Clinic, and Dr. Fred Frankel in 2005 and has expanded to locations across the United States and the world. PEERS is a manualized, social skills training intervention for youth with social challenges.

There are four options for getting training in PEERS. (1) The PEERS Certified Training Seminar last two days and is hosted at UCLA.  It is designed specifically for mental health professionals and educators interested in learning and/or implementing the PEERS intervention into their clinical practice. (2) PEERS provides off-site training seminars, presentations or talks for a variety of agencies based on their specific needs.  These may range from 1-4 days, with varying costs. (3) The PEERS Certified School-based Training for Educators is designed exclusively for teachers, school psychologists, counselors, speech and language pathologists, administrators, and school-based professionals who are interested in learning to implement The PEERS Curriculum for School-based Professionals. Attendees will obtain 24 hours of training over 3 days and this training also takes place at UCLA. And (4) PEERS provides off-site School-based training seminars, presentations or talks for a variety of agencies based on their specific needs.  These may range from 1-4 days, with varying costs.

The PEERS program naturally lends itself to sex ed instruction.  For example, the adolescent program focuses on

  • How to use appropriate conversational skills
  • How to find common interests by trading information
  • How to appropriately use humor
  • How to enter and exit conversations between peers
  • How to be a good host during get-togethers
  • How to make phone calls to friends
  • How to choose appropriate friends
  • How to be a good sport
  • How to handle arguments and disagreements
  • How to change a bad reputation
  • How to handle rejection, teasing, and bullying
  • How to handle rumors and gossip

This video features a program that uses PEERS for sex ed

Puberty Videos for Boys & Girls

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DVDB101_outHere are videos that were developed for 10 – 17 year olds on the autism spectrum regarding puberty & other sexuality topics.  They are clear, concrete, and move through the material slowly (this is one of the biggest problems with videos for a general audience- they go too fast!)

My favorite thing about the videos is that the male instructor is an individual with autism.

All of the videos can be found on www.coultervideo.com, a website that sells videos by Dan & Julie Coulter.  Dan & Julie are parents of a son with ASD who started creating educational videos on their vacation and now do it full time.

Videos that may be useful:

Circles and Life Horizons

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Circles and Life Horizons are two of the most popular human sexuality curriculum for adults with intellectual disability.

circlesCircles has two levels and two booster packs for $1999 which covers social distance, relationship building (Level 1), social distance expanded, relationship transitions (Level 2), recognizing/reacting  to exploitation, learning appropriate protective behaviors (Abuse Booster), communicable disease, and STD/AID (STD booster).  Again you can just buy specific levels.  This is appropriate for all age groups.

life horizonsLife Horizons is $799 for the two part DVD series which covers: parts of the body, sexual life cycle, human reproduction, birth control, sexual health (Level 1), building self-esteem, moral/legal/social issues male, moral/legal/social issues female, dating/love, marriage/other lifestyles, parenting, and preventing/coping with sexual abuse (Level 2).  You can buy either level separately.  Life Horizons is very useful.  They come with a workbook that you can follow.  It’s not necessarily the most engaging and there is sometimes inaccurate information.    It’s geered towards adults but could also be used with older teens.

This company has several other family life education programs that you might find useful such as “Janet’s Got Her Period” a curriculum for people with severe intellectual disabilities.

Developmental Disabilities and Sexuality Curriculum

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ImageThis is a curriculum by Katherine McLaughlin at Planned Parenthood, Karen Topper at Green-Mountain Self-Advocates, and Jessica Lindert.  I know several folks who use this curriculum and really love it.  It was developed for adults, but they have a school expansion now.  If you already have the adult version you can get the supplement school materials for free.  

I think you get great bang for you buck with this curriculum.  It covers different types of relationships, public/private, friendship, communication, decision making, moving from friend to partner/sweetheart, many roads to relationships, being in a relationship, communicating about sex, decision making about sex, challenges or things that could go wrong, do you want to have a child, avoiding pregnancy, and getting a STI.

Music- A Different Way to Teach Sex Ed

/ sarahlcurtiss / 2 Comments

Songs for Your Body is a curriculum comprised of, you guessed it, songs.   They cover hygiene, abuse, masturbation, contraception, sexually transmitted infections, and sexual health.  You can preview the songs on their website- I liked the masturbation songs.  In general, they’re a little hokey but I think it’s a good example of thinking outside the box.  The CD is $15.41 including shipping and handling and comes with a booklet of lyrics and activities.

Program Development Associates Online Store

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This online store features 33 dvd based resources for teaching human sexuality to individuals with intellectual disability.  They have resources for…

  • All age ranges
  • Boys and girls
  • Nurses
  • Advocates

Prices range from $35.00 to $250.00 with everything in between.  This could be a great place to find what you need.

YAI Online Resource Center

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YAI is a agency out of New York that has a relationship video series I really like.  They also have developed a determining sexual consent manual (which you can get through their online resource center).

Unfortunately, this is not a free service, but as far as somethings go, it’s not too bad.  For $150 a year you can buy membership to the YAI’s online resource center.  You then get to download tons of materials.  They have a lot on relationships and sexuality.  Some of it is geared toward staff/educator preparedness but they also have lesson plans.  Many of the items are available to purchase separately without buying membership to the resource center (and other items, like the relationship videos, aren’t available to download).

You can check out some of the resources available during a free trial.

Sexual Abuse Self Protection Resources

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Shirley Paceley is based out of Blue Tower Training in Decatur, Illinois.  She has been working with individuals with developmental disabilities for over 30 years and has specific expertise in abuse prevention and intervention.  She is available to do trainings and consultations.

Check out this online store for books and resources developed by Shirley and others for teaching about sexuality and sexual abuse prevention.