 Major sponsors for Abel Denonair include Green Mountain Support Services of Vermont, Washington County Mental Health, Al-A'Israel. Food sponsors for Abel Denonair include Geffen Foods Israel, Osam Foods Israel. Major media sponsors for Abel Denonair include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, www.thisisabronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, U.S. Press Court, Domestic and International. Anchor FL and Spotify. Hello and welcome to this edition of Abel Denonair, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns and achievements of the different label. I've always been your host, Lauren Seiler. On this edition, we will focus on sex and people with special needs and with us to discuss this important topic. Would you mind introducing yourself please? Not at all. Katherine McLaughlin and I have a small business called Elevators Training and I live in New Hampshire. Okay. Can you explain the missions and goals of your agency and how it works with advocacy and sex and people with special needs? So, mission is to empower, motivate and educate self-advocates, professionals and parents, to gain confidence, comfort, knowledge and skills to teach and openly talk about sexuality. And the hope is that that will lead to people with developmental disabilities, leading sexually healthy lives. That's the mission. The goals are really to provide education and training and educational materials to help people address this topic. So rather than me running all around the country, I have to teach this. My focus has been, how do I help other people? Okay. It will become a country. So why is it, or why is it so hard for especially parents of children with special needs? Why is it so hard for people to talk about sex as a topic because it is a touchy subject for a lot of people? Yeah. Well, I think one thing is when we hear sexuality education, we think sex, but really it means a lot more than that. So it's also about relationships. How do you interact in different kinds of relationships? What's the difference between public and private? What's okay to do here and there? As well as how do you move from friends to a partner or sweetheart? And it's a lot more than sex. So I think that's one thing. Is it people hear sexuality and get scared that you're gonna teach my child to have sex? I think the other thing is that in general, our culture isn't comfortable with this topic, whether you have a disability or not. So we just, most people tell me at trainings that they get the message that they're not supposed to talk about it. Wait till you're married, all kinds of things like that. So we have this negative messages in our culture about this topic in general. Then we lay on disability too. And so I think many people think of people with disabilities as asexual. So not needing any of this information, not wanting relationships, nothing. And so I think those views, those myths and stereotypes about people with disabilities make it hard for people to talk about it. So one is we just don't talk about it in our culture and the other are these myths and stereotypes. Another stereotype is that people with disabilities are childlike, so they need protection from this. So I think that's another reason that it's that, how we're viewing people with disabilities. And another is sometimes people think of people with disabilities as over sex. I can't give them this information or go wild. So there's all these ideas about people with disabilities that make people hold back and talking about it. And as far as families, you bring up that point about in particular families, I think there's a lot of fear. And one of the reasons is there's a high rate of sexual abuse on this population. And so parents are very afraid, which rightly so. And so they want to protect and don't realize that sometimes withholding that information is actually more dangerous. Speaking about protection, our governor, cause we're in Vermont, so our governor, Governor Scott, just passed a ruling that now kids in middle school can get condoms at the nurses office, can get condoms in the bathroom through a vending machine. Do you see that as a good thing or a bad thing when it comes to this and sex? Yeah, I think one of the things that we worry about is our parents, our families, our grownups worry about is if we give condoms to middle schoolers, somehow we're telling them to go out and have sex. But I see it more as if you're getting lots of information and access to birth control and contraception. If you need it, then it's there or condoms. So I don't think that providing condoms makes anyone become more sexually active. It actually gives people access to things to protect themselves. Now, how has the media played before we get into your services? How has the media played into sex and people with special needs? Because for years, I mean, disability goes out the window. On a regular standpoint, the pornographic industry has been rampant, 70s, 80s, pornographic movies, et cetera. So, but when giving a message to people with special needs, you don't want to have them get the wrong idea. So, go ahead. How has the media played into this and people with special needs? So I think in one way, the media hasn't really had much representation of people with disabilities in relationship. So when you don't see anything in the media, you think it's not really for you or, so there's that. But then there's also, like you're saying, pornography. So not just people with disabilities, young people say that, you know, it's sort of like their new sex ed, right? It's no one else will talk about it. So I'll go look at pornography and learn about sex ed. And so I think the more we can talk about this and talk about healthy sexuality, the better off young people, adults are going to be because if we don't, then they're going to look to pornography as the sexuality educator. Not their parents, not their school, not their sex ed class. So I think in that way, you know, we need to, it actually means we need more information about it. And in particular, when you talk about pornography and there's just a lot of messages that are given through pornography. And in particular one is that you don't ever have to ask anybody. You can just do what you want, right? So we need to talk about the fact that pornography is not real life. It's like a movie. They're actors playing into it. It's the same thing like those years that go back in the 80s, 70s and 80s you had, also those telephone lines people would call not a real person, it's a recording or part real part recording. I mean, we just don't want to give the wrong message to a person with a special need based on those things, you know? Yeah, so let's say someone doesn't think of this one person as a sexual being, so they don't talk about it, but the person feels like a sexual being and wants information. And so they go online to look for it, right? So I often will say to parents, if we don't teach healthy sexuality, someone else is gonna teach unhealthy. And one study found that people with intellectual developmental disabilities, where they get their information is pornography and parents or the media and parents. So oftentimes not in schools. I've worked with many self advocates that will say they were in the mainstream health class in high school and they learned about nutrition, physical activity, and then the sexuality unit started and they were removed from class. So if you want information like most people do about this topic, you'll go to the internet to learn. Why were they moved from class? Was there a reason? Well, it's hard to tell. You know, did parents not want them in there? Did the school think, oh, they don't need it? I don't really know why, but they were removed. And this was five years ago. This wasn't, you know, the 1940s or something. So, and many self advocates have told me that same story. So the message is this isn't for you. You don't need it. And then you end up not having the information you need. So what services does your agency provide when dealing with sex education? Because this is basically what it is, sex education that you offer to advocates and groups and so on. Yeah, so we have a bunch of different trainings that we do and therefore self advocates, professionals, parents, guardians, so I'll tell you about a few of those different trainings that we have. But first I work directly with people with developmental disabilities and talking about sexuality and relationships. So I do that kind of work. And then also we do training. So I have this three day training. It's usually attended by professionals, sometimes parents, mostly because they're in a professional role but also have a child. And once in a while, some self advocates. So they come for three days, now it's online on Zoom. And they're gonna learn how to lead sexuality education classes. They're gonna learn how to lead parent workshops. So how do you talk to your own kids with developmental disabilities about sexuality? And then they're also going to learn about staff training. How do you go back to your agency and train staff? So that's one training. And they receive three curricula and all the skills and then they go back and start doing the service. And you receive a certificate during completion. Is there a certificate of completion? Yep. Yeah, so we have something, you can get a certificate of attendance or you can take an online learning objective assessment and find out if you learned what we're hoping that you learned and then you get a certificate of completion. Yeah. Yes. So that's one training that we do six, seven times a year. We also have started working with some developmental disability councils. And we're doing a project where we're training teams of self advocate and a professional become a team and they teach sexuality education classes. So for example, in Michigan, I went to Michigan, I did this training with self advocates and professionals. And then now they cover most of Michigan. So if you live in any area in Michigan, you can receive sexuality education. And one of the features is somebody with a disability. So that's a project I'm doing there. And we're hoping to do more of those projects in other states as well. But I wanna also go back to Vermont because really this work started for me in Vermont. Okay. And I worked with Green Mountain Self Advocates. And then yeah, they happen to fund us. So yeah, they're a wonderful organization. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I started working with the self advocates at Green Mountain Self Advocates. And I was talking about the fact that there weren't a lot of curriculum, like sexuality education curriculum for this population. And so I was thinking, because I was an educator, I was gonna create the curriculum and I was gonna teach it. And the self advocates said, no, no, no, we wanna be part of it. Nothing about us without us, right? We wanna be part of creating the curriculum and we wanna be teachers of the curriculum as well. So the curriculum that I wrote with them years ago and I updated it a couple of years ago is designed for self advocates to be one of the teachers. So it's scripted, all of teaching tools, everything you need. So that sort of as part of my goals is I wanted to create materials that someone could get a little bit of training and then take it and run the bit, you know? So that was a really good awareness for me. Like of course they wanna be part of it. That makes absolutely perfect sense. So then I've really tried to use that framework moving forward that people with disabilities are involved in all of these projects and they can be teachers and leaders in this area as well. So that's another training. And then I do lots of different in-service training. So I'll go into an agency and teach, you know, trained staff about just kind of talking one-on-one about it maybe. We also have online live online workshops. They're about an hour and a half on different topics. And we also have two, what we call self study courses, one for parents and one for staff or professionals. And it's really how do you talk one-on-one about this topic. And it's so you do it whenever you wanna do it. There's handouts you print off and do a few activities and things. So you're learning at home on your own. So those are some of our products. The other thing is that's come up is, you know, my focus has been how do we teach all people with developmental disabilities about this topic? And I think, you know, there's a range of disabilities out there too. So we also designed some communication boards and cards to go with the curriculum. So if somebody does not speak and they're part of the class, they can participate by using these boards and cards. So sort of not just assuming everyone can talk. Boards and cards. What is it like a board game type of thing? Well, you know, it's more like you use this, something like this to talk, right? So it says, I feel the ending was and then the person can point positive, negative, confusing, something else. Or was that healthy or unhealthy? So if you can't speak, you can use these cards as well. So that's trying to create more tools so more people can access the information and also participate. Because if you're in a class and everyone's talking and you're not, you're doing thumbs up and thumbs down, right? But how can you be more engaged? Because we learn when we're engaged. So we're trying to, okay, so that's, let's try to reach people who are, even non-readers can use these cards too because we tried to put graphics instead of text. So we're trying to reach as many people as possible. And at any time that I see a barrier, then we'll say, okay, well, what can we do to support this group within the discipline? Do you have a set of DVDs of your training as well? Or is it basically just materials? It's basically materials, but we do have some videos of, maybe different role plays or things like that. There are three on our website. So we've got, we have a resource page that has many articles and lesson plans and different things people can access to even just start talking about this topic. Do you get into, okay, so within your trainings, you talk about relationships, right? Boyfriend, girlfriend, you get into marriage at all or marriage and people with special needs and sex as well or how does that play in? Yeah, so we, you know, all the relationships we're talking about are between two people. So it might be a man and a woman, you know, it might be two men, it might be two women, these sexual romantic relationships, right? So we're very inclusive because I want people in my classes to feel like they're visible and they're part of things rather than many people who are LGBTQ who talked about feeling invisible in class in sexuality education. So how do we make sure people feel like they matter and everyone matters? So that's one piece of the bit. As far as marriage, I don't go into a lot on marriage, but we, you know, it might come up as a question around can I get married? And, you know, for most, it kind of depends on each state whether someone can get married or not. So you have to kind of look into that. But I think one of the barriers for people is that they lose their benefits if they get married. I didn't lose my benefits because I got married because there's a difference between SSD and SSDI. If you're on SSDI, you might get, you know, I mean, on SSI rather, some people on SSI lose their benefits. So I think there's that whole... Find out, yeah. Yeah, mm-hmm. Is there anything that we did not cover that you think should be covered within this interview? Well, I think, I think it's a good question. I think, let's see. Well, I think one thing that you brought up to earlier in questions was what about, how do you, like several times people will say, well, my son or daughter, yeah, they are 21 or they are 18, but they have a cognitive age. Not that I like these sort of labels, but that's what people will say, right? The difference is between low-functioning and high-functioning. Is your training, does your training help within this? Or do you have to go back and change the wording so people can understand it if they're low-functioning? You see my point there? Absolutely, yeah, so I guess the first point I wanna make is we wanna base the topics on the biological age, right? So if someone says, yeah, they're 18, but they're cognitively more like a seven-year-old. What a lot of people do is they think, okay, well, then what does seven-year-olds need? Because that's not accurate. We wanna teach to the biological age. How you teach depends on somebody's cognitive abilities and limitations, not, you're gonna biological and then how is the part that might be a little bit different. And it's hard to teach a group of people if there's a wide range of abilities and limitations. So it can be really hard in any class, right? If you feel like, oh, I'm gonna lose this person, but this person just asked that question. So it can be tricky to balance all of that. And if someone needs more time to process information, what I'll do is they'll do some pre-teaching first. So they get- What do you mean by pre-teaching? So before the class, you might go over the handouts and talk about the key points that are gonna be in the class, right, so you get that first. Then you come to class and you hear it again, right? So really reinforcing that. And then some post-teaching. So sometimes people need more, right? And that you'll, you find ways to adapt. So, and you do the best you can. And if you're working one-on-one, it's easier because you can really get a sense of, is somebody understanding this or not? Okay, maybe I need to do this a little bit differently. In a class, it's a little bit harder to know. So are you, well, besides self-advocate, so what are some of the other agencies that you've done this with? I mean, cause obviously you're all over the gamut, you know, with going to organizations. So, yeah. So it tends to be developmental disability agencies and the school districts tend to be where I am. School districts, high school age or elementary or both? My curriculum really goes to high school and beyond, but some of the middle, you could do some of the lessons for middle school, but there isn't a lot around elementary school age, kids in this. But I would say things like teaching body autonomy to young children is really important, that their body is their own and they get to decide who touches it and doesn't touch it and you know, things like that. Good touches bad, yeah, good touches bad touches cause that's where with young children, I mean, you know, child abuse plays into play also, you know, good touches, bad touches, that kind of thing as well. Right, right. So I usually talk about that more in relationships or what kind of the different types of relationships and that when you're a child, no one should be touching your sexual parts unless you are going to a doctor and they're trying to make you healthy or somebody is caring for you and needs to help you clean or diaper you or something like that and you actually need that. But other than that, when you're young, really people don't touch your sexual parts. So someone does and same with adults too, talking about it's your body and you get to decide what's right for you. And many of the students in my class, it's really hard for them to grasp. They feel like they've been told most of their lives what to do. And so as soon as I say, no, you shouldn't do that then they won't do it. So how do they learn body autonomy? And also young kids can learn about the different sexual parts and using accurate terminology for them and not similar words. Speaking of accurate terminology, within your classes, do you like do definitions? Like this is what this means. This is what this means and go into defining certain things. Yeah. Yeah, so we'll do, there's a couple lessons on body parts. So what are the different body parts and how do you take care of them and how do they work and what do they do? And yeah, all of that, which for some states require second graders to learn about body parts and reproduction. Really? Second graders? Second graders. Wow. And I mean, the thing is, we feel like somehow it's bad to do that, right? That somehow we're shattering their innocence, but it's really just fast. So it's just a body part and this is how people are born mostly. So I think we feel like, oh my God, we're gonna shatter their innocence if we talk about this, but it's just health and wellness and body parts. Is there anything you wanna, because we have 10 minutes left. So is there anything that you, we wanna go over where people can contact you, but is there anything that we haven't covered that should be covered within this? Because obviously, I think at the end of this, I'll email you and then we can decide, I'm sure we can do a second part to this because there's a lot more to go into this, that's a really interesting topic. Is there anything within this that we haven't covered so far? Yeah, well I think one concept is sexual self-advocacy. So this idea of speaking up for yourself if you wanna be in a relationship, because many times the general population, we think eventually they'll become in some kind of relationship, but people with disabilities know they won't be in relationships. So you have to speak up and say I want this in my life, right? So that's one aspect of it. And then the other aspect is within relationships, how do you speak up as well? And many self-advocates say that it's harder to be a sexual self-advocate than a general self-advocate. That if they say they want a job or they wanna live on their own, people say, okay, great, let's figure out what you need to do and we'll get you there. But when they say I wanna start dating or I wanna have time in my room along with my partner, then they get the silence and the awkwardness. So it makes it much harder to be a sexual self-advocate. So the curriculum that I developed with Green Mountain Self-Advocates, that's focus is how do you speak up? For what you want to teach? The several policy conference that Green Mountain Support Services did and you did with them, what did you go over in the conference? I mean, what was your topic on in the speeches and so on? Yeah, it was really about becoming a sexual self-advocate. So what does that mean and what gets in the way of that? And we talked really personally, people talked about their barriers and what's difficult about it. And so I think it's more, it wasn't like a specific topic but more like what is sexual self-advocacy? What gets in our way? How do we speak up? Those sorts. So that's what I did both days. Yeah. Okay, so where can people contact you if they want more information, your website and so on? Yeah. So the website is elevatistraining.com and elevatist is E-L-E-V-A-T-U-S training. Elevate us, like elevator but elevate us training. Is it dot com or dot org? Dot com. Dot com. But it's elevate us. So there's an E missing in it. So instead of, so E-E-L-E-V-A-T-U-S. So we kind of mushed elevate us together. And really that was the idea around elevating the status of people with disabilities and having people think of them as sexual being. So that's where the name came from as well. Now, is there a phone number that people can contact you or? Yeah, so you could contact us at 603-399-5777. And two of us have extensions there. And my extension is 102. Or you could also talk to Helene, who's the head of operations and does a lot of the background work for the business. So there's two of us there. So your title is sexual educator, correct? Or am I wrong in that? No, what I would say is I'm a sexuality educator and trainer. Okay, sexuality educator and trainer for people with special needs, correct? For people with developmental disabilities, yeah. Well, I would love to thank you for joining us on this edition of Able to Run Air. It's been a pleasure. I'll contact you about doing the training myself because I really would like to go through this. Well, we would like to thank you for joining us on this edition of Able to Run Air. Again, you can go to www.elevateus.com. Or what is the number again that people can contact you? 603-399-5777. Yeah. 399-399-5777. 5777. And Catherine McLaughlin, correct? Sexual educator and trainer for Elevateus. Thank you again for joining us on this edition of Able to Run Air. We would like to thank our sponsors, Weemount Support Services, Washington County Mental Health, and many others. And thank you to our guests today for explaining sex and people with special needs. And this puts an end to this edition of Able to Run Air. I'm Lauren Seiler. See you next time. Major sponsors for Able to Run Air include Green Mountain Support Services of Vermont, Washington County Mental Health, Al-A'Israel. Food sponsors for Able to Run Air include Geffen Foods Israel, Osam Foods Israel. Major media sponsors for Able to Run Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, www.thisisthebronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, U.S. Press Corps, Domestic and International. Anchor FM and Spotify.