Consent Resources for People with Cognitive and Developmental Disabilities

What do we mean when we say consent? Do we mean empowered decision making, a legal exchange, or what? Here are a few ways to look at it. Find the entire discussion about consent in the 2018 webinar series, webinar #2.

  • Autonomy/Agency (empowerment) 
  • Self-determination; i.e., my decisions impact what happens to me and the world around me;
  • Possible for everyone through supported decision making;
  • Power is located within the individual and executed through the individual’s decisions;
  • Power is shared in the mutuality of equitable sexual decision making.
  • (Legal) Consent
  • Requires competency and capacity in sexual decision making
  • Legal and medical systems interact to enact decision making power (system over individual)
  • Comprehensive culturally affirming sexual health education not required in every state, but competency is always required for legal sexual consent

Culturally Affirming Healthy Sexuality Resources

Pre-screen individuals using trauma-informed processes as a sexual consent tool can trigger trauma-related memories.  Healthy sexuality classes are part of comprehensive violence prevention efforts that include organizational assessments and policy changes as necessary to support health and wellness for all people. 

Credit

Post written by Cierra Olivia Thomas Williams, Prevention Specialist at Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence  

IMPACT:Ability

IMPACT:Ability brings together a sexual violence prevention program with a Boston disability services agency. Together, they worked to create culture change supportive of equitable practices and multiple forms of relationships for people with disabilities. Meg Stone, IMPACT:Ability Executive Director and Keith Jones presented September 1, 2016 at the National Sexual Assault Conference on their work “Collaborating with the Disability System to Prevention Sexual Assault and to Support Survivors with Disabilities.” IMPACT implemented policies that support the ethical and equitable treatment of people who receive services at a disability services day program in Boston. Using a variety of evaluation methods, Ms. Stone reported most non-managerial staff could not correctly identify proper reporting protocol in 2012 before her intervention. In 2014, post-intervention evaluations demonstrated most staff could correctly identify reporting protocols and were more likely to report caregiver abuse of a client with disabilities.IMPACT:Ability is an evidence-based program that uses a three pronged approach to:

  • build capacity within agencies to support and report abuse using model policies and procedures;
  • empower people with disabilities with relationship skills necessary to pursue safe, healthy, and consensual interactions with others; and
  • provide organizational consulting and consent training, including sexual violence prevention model policies (code of ethics, mandated reporter of abuse, participant-on-participant abuse, whistleblower, abuse disclosure checklist, residential sexuality).
Check Out IMPACT:Ability

Credit

Post written by Cierra Olivia Thomas Williams, Prevention Specialist at Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence

Sidewalks to Sexual Violence Prevention: A Guide to Exploring Social Inclusion with People with Developmental Disabilities

Sidewalks to Sexual Violence Prevention: A Guide to Exploring Social Inclusion with People with Developmental Disabilities

When I feel sad I tell someone. It makes me feel better. I sit in a different room. It brings tears to my eyes. It feels good to cry. I feel a lot better. It makes me keep going.

Written by a participant with disabilities

The guide shares the stories of one collaboration with 25 people with a variety of disabilities who sought to increase social inclusion, which is the connective tissue that creates an opportunity to have safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments. If you are looking for prevention tools meant to create protective environments (per the CDC Stop SV: a Technical Package to Prevent SV), please check out the Inclusion Appendix or the Inclusion Project Guide that ICADV developed with 25 people with developmental and cognitive disabilities and featured by PreventConnect and National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC).

The complete guide to replicate the project and all accessible data collection methods created and used by the Bloomington Inclusion Collaborative. You will find agency inclusion mapping tools developed by Evelyn G. Smith who worked at Middle Way House, focus group protocols for people with cognitive and developmental disabilities, focus group protocols for caregivers, and community-wide participatory social mapping tools that were developed with people with a variety of disabilities. Please use and share these tools and resources!

Inclusion Project Guide
Inclusion Appendix

The public health approach to violence prevention asks us to engage in a 4 step process to identify the problem, address the associated factors that increase or decrease violence (risk/protective factors), evaluate both the process and outcomes, and share the findings (positive and negative).

The Bloomington Inclusion Collaborative formed in 2015 with the financial support of the Indiana State Department of Health Rape Prevention and Education grant to collaboratively develop community-wide solutions to increase inclusion based upon unique barriers found in Bloomington, Indiana. Adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities along with eleven cross-sector partners engaged in participatory social mapping to assess barriers to inclusion in neighborhoods, public spaces and businesses.

In 2016, the data about barriers to inclusion specific to Bloomington were prioritized for solutions-advocacy and implementation. By sharing the tools developed over the course of the project along with the lessons learned, the Bloomington Inclusion Collaborative encourages others to engage with people with disabilities to examine factors that reduce sexual violence risks specific to their communities and implement practice-based solutions to increase inclusion, which is protective across all aspects of human life.

Inclusion project tools created in collaboration with Maggie Matson, MPH, and Bloomington Inclusion Collaborative include:

  • Informed Consent (for Consultant)
  • Recruitment Process Checklist
  • Participatory Social Mapping in Your Own Agency
  • Organizational Mapping/Assessment Tool
  • Strategies for De-escalation
  • Inclusive Changes to Structures (some cheap or low cost solutions)
  • Participatory social mapping: individuals, businesses, neighborhoods, public spaces
  • Original protocol for social network mapping
  • Social Network Grid
  • Original protocol for environmental mapping
  • Original Version- Community Windshield/Walking/Rolling Survey
  • Adapted protocol for environmental mapping of businesses, public spaces and neighborhoods
  • Focus Group Protocols
  • Protocol for Focus Groups with Adults with Cognitive Disabilities
  • Focus Group Questions and Scripts
  • Key Informant Interviews with Caregivers (to people with cognitive or other disabilities), Protocols, Questions for Staff, Questions for Parents,
  • Monroe County Public Library Cultural Competency Assessment and MCPL Score Codes.
Inclusion Project Guide
Inclusion Appendix

Sidewalks Explored

In partnership with Stone Belt, Arc (2016), ICADV participated in a national conversation with CALCASA and PreventConnect about emergent inclusion efforts in sexual violence prevention and in research using the data and efforts of the Bloomington Inclusion Collaborative. The project was followed through to a session at the 2016 National Sexual Assault Conference, which co-presented by two project stakeholders. The session was recorded and it is available below.

Credit

Post written by Cierra Olivia Thomas Williams, Prevention Specialist at Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence

Creating Access: Supporting Survivors of Sexual Assault with Disabilities by CALCASA

This special information packet by CALCASA provides an overview of ableism, legal rights, and prevalence of sexual violence of people with disabilities. Not only does the tool provide suggestions for outreach and engagement, it provides a comprehensive list of physical accessibility improvement suggestions and list of disabilities with definitions and disability support agencies in California. The packet includes primary prevention strategies, including suggestions to increasing community inclusion for people with disabilities.

Read Info Packet