Respect and education are expressed within the concept of sexual assistance for disabled people, which represents the highest expression of the right to health and the right to a psycophisical and sexual welfare in a civilized country.
For these reasons, sexual assistance for disabled people is a concept that cannot be reduced only to a physical sphere, but it should instead be articulated into its fades of emotional assistance, affectivity assistance, body discovery assistance and sexuality.
The emotional, affectivity, body and sexual assistance goes along with the freedom of choice of individuals who decide to live and share their own sexual and erotical experience despite the difficulties in lives.
The sexual assistance is a professional (man or woman) who, regardless of his/her sexual orientation, must hold healthy sexual and psycho-physical features. It is important to carefully select the candidates.
The sexual assistant, supported by his/her professional know-how, accompanies disabled people in their experience of erotism and sexuality. The professional is trained to sexuality in terms of theory, psychology and anatomy, and he/she aims to help disabled people, either with physical or mental issues, to achieve their erotical, sensual and/or sexual experience.
The encounters are oriented toward a continuous work that starts from the plain massage or physical contact, thus encouraging the sensorial experience and advising on the importance of the auto-erotic activity, and gradually gets to the sexual stimulation and to the feeling of sexual pleasure and its climax, the orgasm.
The professional of sexual well-being has a qualified and adequate training, so not to focus only on the mechanical aspects of a sexual intercourse. The sexual assistant will be asked to promote a culture of affectivity and sexual awareness, orienting and channeling the sexual and emotional energies stuck within the body of a disabled person. Therefore, one of the main aim of the sexual assistance is to overcome the stereotype that sees disabled people as a-sexual people or not interested nor able to live and experience sexuality.
It is important to underline that disabled people do have a sexual need.
The sexual assistant, thanks to his/her training and education, sensitiveness and willingness can make disabled people rediscover three different aspects of sexual education:
- playful: to discover your own body
- relational: to discover the other’s body
- ethical: to discover and underline the value of physicality
The sexual assistant helps the disabled person to become aware and responsible of his/her sexual and love relationships, fostering a deeper knowledge and awareness of the self that translates also into a more attentive care of his/her body and person. The lack of self-esteem is one of the toughest obstacles in relating to the relevant others.
The sexual assistant can be of help in accepting rather then denying the different urges of a person’s body.