Getting personal: an exploratory study of intimate and personal care provision for people with profound and multiple intellectual disabilities.

Jaffe et al. (2002) talked with staff and families about bathing, toileting, and other intimate care for people with profound intellectual disability.

They asked what makes the job hard and where services fall short. The work is pure exploration; no numbers, just stories.

Care plans for intimate tasks are thin or missing. Staff guess what to do and learn by trial and error.

Families feel left out and worry about safety, dignity, and abuse risk.

Moss et al. (2009) zooms in on one slice of the problem: penile hygiene for males with ID. It repeats the same gap—no clear rules—and adds that male staff are often absent when they are needed most.

Gauthier-Boudreault et al. (2017) and Ooms et al. (2026) extend the story into transition years. They show the same care void hurting teens and young adults as they move from child to adult services.

Hithersay et al. (2014) sweep the wider literature and find zero proven carer-led health programs for adults with ID. Together the papers form a straight line: we keep recording the缺口 but have not yet built the fix.

If you write programs, policies, or staff training, treat intimate care as a skill set that needs its own protocol, not a side note in a behavior plan. Start Monday: audit your agency’s written guidance for bathing, toileting, and menstrual care. If the page is blank, you have your first goal.