Lack of sex education puts disabled at risk

YOUNG PEOPLE with intellectual and physical disabilities are being put at risk by society’s reluctance to provide them with sex education, a conference will hear today.

Sligo-based MA student and social researcher Jessica Mannion said research she had conducted with 22 young adults confirmed that they were being denied information and choices about a range of lifestyle issues, because they had a disability.

Ms Mannion will tell the National Disability Authority’s annual conference which takes place at Croke Park today, that people with disabilities are denied choices about basic everyday issues such as where they eat, study or socialise with friends.

“Many of the things these young people told me were surprising but I suppose the most shocking finding was that none of them had received any sex education,” said Ms Mannion. “All of them had gone to special schools and they had received no sex education. As a result, one young woman had unsafe sex because she trusted her partner who told her it was safe.”

Ms Mannion said this reflected the “huge taboo around disability and sex” and ignored the fact that young people will have sex whether they are provided with information or not. “I think maybe people are trying to protect them by not telling them anything but they are putting them in dangerous situations,” she said.

Ms Mannion, who is doing her MA on the recreational needs of young people with disabilities, also identified a sense of isolation among teenagers and young adults who cannot access mainstream youth clubs and leisure activities. “They just want to hang out in a youth club and do ‘normal’ stuff such as listen to music, go on the karaoke and play the Wii but instead they say youth clubs which cater for disability are very limited and provide only ‘special’ art activities which they don’t want.”

For her research Ms Mannion, who is based at Sligo Institute of Technology, used an “emancipatory approach” which meant trying to resolve issues as they arose. She consulted the 22 volunteers aged 12-25, who have a range of physical and intellectual disabilities, throughout the process .

“Two in the group of 22 told me that they would love to go to college but that option was never given to them,” said Ms Mannion. “One of them told me that staff in the workshop she attends go out to lunch with the trainees once a week but it is always the staff who decide where, even though the trainees pay for their meals. Another young woman with a mild learning disability told me that staff arranged a holiday for her without even consulting her or asking where she would like to go. Nobody listens to them.”

Her study, Silent Voices – The recreational needs of young people with disabilities – an emancipatory approach, will be one of four presentations at today's conference dealing with the issue of how to enhance self-development in the community for those with a disability.