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6 Impact of the LD ISVA service on partnership work with other agencies
The LD ISVA provided specialist advice to professionals and raised awareness of sexual violence within the LD community.
Before the LD service, people with LD would disengage from sexual violence services, including SafeLink, because staff did not have the time or resource to meet their learning needs. Moreover, LD services did not have enough skills or expertise to deal with sexual violence.
Alongside giving support to the survivor, her role also had an education function within the wider care community.
LD ISVA: People with LD fall through the gaps of support. LD services don’t have sexual violence knowledge and sexual violence services don’t have the LD skills.
Going to things like FME, counselling assessments, and sexual health appointments, you see from the client’s point of view how overwhelming that is. So many services don’t have any adjustments and don’t attempt to understand what the person’s communication needs are and if they really understand something.
I’ve been really happy I’ve been there with people. I can say ‘hang on, stop, do you understand what that means’ (no) ‘can we just go over that again? Maybe explain that in this way.
The LD ISVA worked across all social care networks and often found a recurring theme of many professionals not considering people with LD as being targets of sexual abuse and/or they had a perception of them not being sexually active.
LD ISVA: In a couple of cases, I think the assessment and safety-planning was affected by the fact that the service thought the sexual abuse wasn’t as serious as the person
was presenting. The service didn’t see the client as someone anyone would want to sexually abuse because they have a LD: they don’t see that person as a sexual being, having sex in the community or other people taking advantage of them for sexual purposes.
People who work with LD need equipping to respond to disclosures better and to know what support is out there and how to use it appropriately.
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