People with intellectual disabilities have affective-sexual desires and needs, but they face psychosocial barriers that hinder their possibilities of having healthy, positive and satisfying experiences in this area. Difficulties in accessing sources of information about sexuality, restricted social environments and parental overprotection mean that this population has a very low level of knowledge and skills, increasing their vulnerability to negative experiences such as sexual abuse, unwanted pregnancies and STIs, thereby limiting their opportunities to establish and maintain romantic relationships.

In previous research, the Salusex group has confirmed the existence of the aforementioned shortcomings and the possibility of alleviating them with affective-sexual education adapted to the specific characteristics of the target group (level of experience, degree of support needs, level of literacy, etc.).  This affective-sexual education should be given by the professionals who work with them on a daily basis, as they are the ones who know them best, which facilitates a climate of trust and security to talk about this subject. In order to carry out this task correctly, professionals demand valid and reliable guidelines, materials and methods.

In response, we have designed activities to assess the skill level of socio-sexual skills, as well as guidelines to promote their development. In this symposium we focus on three specific aspects related to sexual health: prevention of sexual abuse, condom use and communication in romantic interactions. The methodology we propose stands out for two reasons: it does not require the person being assessed to be literate, and it focuses primarily on their ability to put knowledge and skills into practice. Regarding the dynamics to work on these three points, we present concrete examples of the Saludiversex Programme, a programme of affective-sexual education whose effectiveness has been demonstrated. Regarding didactic strategies, we mainly use role-playing, modelling in situ and brief theoretical explanations to provide them with the basic information that allows them to identify the situations and contexts in which they should put the skills addressed into practice.