Our Approach:
Within Liaise we support people from the ages of 16 years. Throughout each persons life, how relationships are formed and maintained is vitally important.
One of the most challenging areas to understand in each of our lives can be understanding our own sexuality and being able to safely express our needs and wishes.
For people with additional support needs this area of their life can be more challenging to understand and equally challenging for those around them to offer the appropriate support.
Within Liaise our Positive Behaviour Support Team (PBS) work with individuals to help and support. They do this by working with some individuals on sexual education and understanding of relationships, this is to help them explore the opportunities to have a relationship if they choose or build upon existing relationships. This involves first conducting an assessment of their current knowledge around relationships, the body and intimate acts to establish where further support is required.
From this information we then have sessions exploring those areas and building on their understanding of things like consent, what healthy relationships look like and supporting them to make choices about this aspect of their lives.
This type of education can allow people to develop their knowledge and aid them in developing capacity to make choices around their sexual relationships. We used resources like the BILD Capacity Assessment for Sex and the Sex and the 3 R’s sexual education resource, where additional support is required we would consult with an external expert in the topic.
We continue to be successful in guiding people along their individual pathway, leading to them having fulfilling relationships in whatever form this takes.
