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. 

• Elevatus Training (formerly Disability Workshops) offers training for staff, parents, people with developmental or intellectual disabilities on sexual health.  Elevatus offers “Trauma Informed curriculum, online training and in-service/live workshops to help staff, educators, direct support pros, self-advocates and parents confidently navigate the topic of sexuality.”  
• (Free) Capacity Assessment for Sex, 2011  
• ($$$) Verbal Informed Sexual Consent Assessment Tool (VISCAT), 2009  
• Taking an umbrella into a hurricane: why consent education should be step two in our work to eliminate sexual violence by the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence Prevention Team
• Check out the Sexuality & Disability Consortium, where you will find: In my voice: sexual self-advocacy (free book)
• ‘‘Remember Our Voices are Our Tools: Sexual Self-advocacy as Defined by People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Sex Disability” (2014) 32:515–532
• Fact sheets that are awesome!  

Credit

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