Assessing and Meeting Needs in HIV and Learning Disability

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Abstract
The aim of this paper is to identify progress and explore issues in relation to HIV prevention and safer sex education for people with learning disabilities. A number of practical, conceptual and political questions surface in relation to assessing and meeting needs in HIV and learning disability. These raise dilemmas for those involved in commissioning services, developing safer sex educational resources or providing safer sex education. The imperative in HIV prevention is to target messages on people who are most at risk of HIV infection, namely men who have sex with men. This paper argues that effective HIV prevention must be relevant to people's lives and behaviours; it has to involve empowerment and therefore sexual and service politics. As a consequence lessons from safer sex and sexual health work by gay men could be used to inform HIV prevention work in learning disability. The paper identifies and outlines these areas and the range of services and interventions available for taking work forward. The ideas and arguments presented have been developed from needs assessment work, reviewing educational resources in staff training and work developing a sex education and staff training resource on HIV and learning disability.