Sexuality and personal relationships for people with an intellectual disability. Part II: staff and family carer perspectives.
Staff already support intimacy for adults with ID, but most families do not—bridge the gap with shared policy meetings.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked two groups about sex and love for adults with intellectual disability. Group one: paid support staff. Group two: moms, dads, and siblings. Everyone filled out the same survey.
They wanted to see if staff and families think the same way about dating, kissing, and marriage.
What they found
Staff were open. Most said adults with ID can have boyfriends, girlfriends, and even marry. Families were not. About 80 percent wanted only hand-holding or less.
The gap is big. The same person might hear “yes, date” at the day center and “no, never” at home.
How this fits with other research
Werner (2019) asked Arab and Jewish families in Israel how well services work. Both ethnic groups gave similar marks, but Arab families used education and social services less. The new angle: culture can shape family use, yet the Irish family-staff split on sex is about attitude, not access.
Saville et al. (2002) used the same survey style to learn how staff feel about aggression. Staff said they stay calm on paper, but real outbursts upset them more than they expected. Same method, different topic—proof that surveys can show hidden staff feelings.
Anonymous (2019) tried a training package to help staff boost resident engagement. Training alone did nothing. The 2009 paper says staff already want to support love lives, so extra classes may not fix the real problem: family push-back.
Why it matters
You can write the perfect dating-social-skills plan, but it will crash if mom says no. Start by sharing the staff survey results with families. Show them that safe, steady relationships cut loneliness and problem behavior. Offer a joint meeting where staff and families set the same rules for holding hands, private time, and safety. One shared policy beats two opposing ones.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Recent ideological shifts in service provision promote appropriate sexual expression for people with an intellectual disability (ID), although there is little evidence that such advances in ideology are matched by current service provision. Part II of the current two-part study assessed the attitudes of staff and family carers to the sexuality of people with an ID. METHOD: A questionnaire survey which included case scenarios was carried out with family (n = 155) and staff carers (n = 153) of people with an ID in the west of Ireland. RESULTS: In general, staff carers were more inclined than family carers to openly discuss issues of sexuality with service users, and to suggest environmental, rather than service-user characteristics, as impediments to such discussions. Attitudinal differences emerged with significant differences between staff and family carers and between younger and older carers. Staff carers were more likely to support service-user engagement in intimate and non-intimate relationships whereas the majority of family carers (80%) showed a preference for low levels of intimacy in service-user relationships. CONCLUSION: When compared with the attitudes of family carers towards the sexuality of people with ID, the attitudes of staff carers more closely match those promoted by ideological developments. However, differences in attitudes between carer groups may lead to inconsistent approaches to the management of sexuality. As a consequence, we conclude that there is continued need to provide staff and family carers with opportunities for dialogue and an ongoing need for training in the area of sexuality.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2009 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2009.01202.x