At Supported Loving (www.supportedloving.co.uk), we passionately believe that for people accessing social care to be well supported surrounding sexuality and relationships they need to be assisted by a confident, knowledgeable and well-trained staff team.
We are now working with Skills for Care, in consultation with CQC and DHSC, to complete an extensive evidence review looking at all the existing learning materials surrounding supporting sexuality and intimate relationships for social care staff. This evidence review will look in detail at what existing learning materials are available, how are they being used and what impact they have.
We want to hear from you! What is your organisation using to train staff in this area? If you do not have training in this area, do you need this? What would be helpful when working with disabled people, what are the key issues you need support with to provide the best support?
This focus group is for any social care staff working to support disabled people, which is defined in the Equalities Act (2010) as situations where an impairment stops having a substantial adverse effect on a person's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities, but the effect is likely to reoccur.
this can include
- Fluctuating or recurring conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, myalgic encephalitis (ME), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia and epilepsy, even if the person is not currently experiencing any adverse effects.
-Other progressive conditions, such as motor neurone disease, muscular dystrophy, and forms of dementia.
-A person who is certified as blind, severely sight impaired, sight impaired or partially sighted by a consultant ophthalmologist is deemed to have a disability.
-Severe disfigurement is treated as a disability.
A range of conditions are treated as a disability, as long as the other factors from the definition are met, in terms of having a substantial and long-term impact on the ability to do normal day to day activities:
-Sensory impairments, such as those affecting sight or hearing.
-Auto-immune conditions such as systemic lupus erythematosis (SLE)
People with a learning disability, autistic people and people with mental health issues have separate focus groups- see organisers page