Disability, acceptance and empowerment

Living with a disability does not mean you are any less of a person without a disability. It simply means that whatever your disability, it is a feature of you and makes you no less a valuable human being than anyone else.
As part of encouraging disability-responsive practices, it is important that a sense of acceptance and belonging is created, that a sense of change and decision-making in relationships is, as Carl Rogers pioneered, self-directed and that an environment promoting social inclusion and engagement is created between the client, the family, the care network and the wider social community of friends, work colleagues and more generally, society. A disability ought not to be regarded merely as a pathological condition, but rather, a feature of a human being who is different, but no less a human being. And a person with a disability has the same basic needs of a sexual life as anyone else: to be accepted, to be loved, to be empowered and to be part of a community, making decisions for their life, not being told what to do by others. We can all help in our own small ways, to be willing to discuss sexuality openly, to acknowledge sexual feeling as being human and to respond with kindness, empathy and understanding. This helps us all to be like a flower on a tree, whatever the environment, we can blossom into our own life’s potential. We can all learn from considering this question: how open and comfortable are we in discussing sexuality in the context of disability and if so, what is it that makes us uncomfortable?