Joining forces to work for sex education for people with disabilities

Sex education for people with disabilities

Sexual experiences belong among the most essential parts of life. Nonetheless, they are often stigmatized or ignored, which is especially hurtful for people with disabilities. There are many reasons why the sexual education of this group is overlooked. One of them is viewing the sexuality of the people belonging to it as abnormal or non-existent.

Prejudices are not the only source of problems with sex education for people with disabilities. For the majority of teenagers, adolescence is the time when there is no more need for constant parental care. Therefore children enjoy freshly gained freedom and privacy. People with disabilities often need assistance, which frequently means depending on their parents, even in their teenage and adult lives. This, in addition to lacking or unadapted sexual education at schools, makes the legal guardian a crucial source of knowledge – a role they are often unprepared to play.

Difficulties faced by parents

Parents of people with disabilities report many obstacles on their way to educating teenagers. They struggle with fear and feeling of incompetence. For many of them, it feels strange to think of their child in terms of sexuality. Especially when the adolescent has a mental

disability, their caregivers fear that sexual education will do more harm than good. Many of them find it safer to teach abstinence than to navigate the complicated topic of sexuality.

As a result, people with disabilities rarely receive comprehensive sexual education, focusing not only on birth control and basic hygiene but also on other aspects, such as maintaining healthy relationships based on consent. We are addressing this problem by supporting parents in educating their children. That is why we want to introduce you to the project that aims to promote knowledge so that parents are no longer alone in their struggles.

Support for the parents

Parents United is a project that promotes cooperation among caregivers in the field of sex education. As a part of the programme, we will create educational materials and organize community-based activities, facilitating intergenerational dialogue.

The caregivers often say they would like to educate their children, but they often feel like they do not have enough information themselves. As a response to this problem, we want to develop sex education courses for parents with disabled children. We will also provide the target group with materials based on questions and answers to help them provide accurate, rights-based information to their children.

The ready-to-use materials will not be the only results of this project. We will also develop sex education sessions for families to encourage intergenerational exchange and community activities with parents. This way, we want to underline the importance of dialogue and relation-building initiatives.

The essential task of education

Sex education for people with disabilities is crucial to ensure the capacity of each individual to make informed and educated choices regarding personal safety. It helps to develop and maintain healthy relationships. It is also essential for maintaining sexual health and hygiene.

We are happy to have the possibility to help parents with such an important task.