What Sexual Assistants Want and Need: Creating a Toolkit and New Solutions to Help Them Better Perform Their Work with Individuals with Disabilities

Sexual assistance services that people with disabilities use for help with sexual activity must be specialized and adapted to the users’ different conditions. Some aspects of sexual assistance have been mentioned in the literature, but the subject is still relatively unexplored, particularly regarding adapted services for people with disabilities. The objective was to create a toolbox with items that might be required in encounters with individuals with disabilities and to think of innovative ideas to improve sexual assistants’ work. This multi-method qualitative study involved two meetings: one workshop and one co-design session. The sample included six future sexual assistants studying at the Italian Institute of Sexology in Rome. The workshop presented two different scenarios so the students could think of what is needed to improve their work. At the end of the workshop, a list of items was developed. The co-design session explored possible design solutions to improve and facilitate their work as sexual assistants. The idea that interested everyone due to its practicality, usability and feasibility was an inflatable sofa/mattress that includes internal divisions so different sections of the mattress can be inflated and/or deflated. The development of projects such as this one provides different perspectives on what still needs to be done within the sexual assistance domain.