Posted on June 11, 2025

By Kendra Julius, CQL Quality Enhancement Specialist

At CQL | The Council on Quality and Leadership, we champion the importance of relationships, community, and belonging for all people. Using Personal Outcome Measures® interview data, we identified an area of opportunity for organizations to expand their support for people. In the Personal Outcome Measures® Benchmarks: 2024 report, data shows only: 

• 26.2% of people had intimate relationships
• 25.7% of organizations assisted the person to explore and evaluate experiences in order to make informed choices about intimate relationships
• 17.5% of organizations addressed any barriers to the person having intimate relationships

This data is inclusive of all people’s identities and sexualities and includes data from people who are heterosexual and cisgender. 

Andrew Gurza, Disability Awareness Consultant, author, podcast host, and adaptive sex toy entrepreneur, has written and spoken extensively about the intersection of disability and queerness. He shares on Instagram, “as a queer disabled person, I don’t really feel entirely welcome in queer spaces because of my disabilities. I also don’t feel welcome entirely in disability spaces either because they tend to not focus on queerness at all, and that kinda sucks.” (Gurza, 2025). 

For Pride Month, we’d like to dive deeper into how organizations providing support to people with disabilities can take a more active role in supporting people to explore their sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression.  Symbolic representation, through displaying flags and attending Pride events – while a show of solidarity – does little on its own to truly ensure people’s day-to-day experiences match their hopes, dreams, and desires.

So how can organizations actively support people to explore their desires for intimacy, identity, and sexuality? 

In this Capstone, we detail some best practices to assist organizations in empowering people to live as their authentic self. You’ll learn about the impact of staff education, risk prevention, and open dialogue. In addition, CQL staff offer up additional tips to supporting people who are members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Organizational Allyship

Organizations can take steps to promote allyship as a matter of organizational culture. Some best practices include: 

• Develop mission, vision, and/or values statements, with input from people with disabilities, stakeholders, and staff, that include the promotion of all people’s identities; center the organization’s mission, vision, and values in all of the work the organization does
• Screen job candidates at all levels of the organization for biases, including against the LGBTQIA+ community 
• Provide LGBTQIA+ training and education to all staff and people-supported; ensure training includes healthy relationship content and sex education
• Promote a culture of inclusion through adoption of LGBTQIA+ specific policies
• Engage with advocacy groups to promote and protect the rights of all people, including all people’s rights to marriage, identity, and sexuality 
• Leadership should model active allyship
• Resources should be LGBTQIA+ inclusive

Staff Education

CQL Quality Enhancement Specialists shared that they find one of the most important strategies organizations can implement is to educate their staff. Organizations can actively work to build a culture of respect and understanding by providing education to all staff about LGBTQIA+ terminology, acceptance, and ways to support people individually. It is best practice to include this within a robust diversity curriculum during orientation and as a part of annual refresher training, or more often.  

Organizations are encouraged to have people receiving services involved in the development of training and education initiatives, but they should recognize people do not owe others an explanation about their identity. Participation in curriculum development requires fair compensation. When people share their authentic selves, it is a privilege to be trusted with the information.

Further, organizations can consult with external topic experts to enhance internal training initiatives during curriculum development and to facilitate standalone training. 

Risk Prevention

Tina Lowry, CQL Quality Enhancement Specialist, expressed best practices for supporting people who are members of the LGBTQIA+ community include “all the same things that you would in a heterosexual relationship…a relationship is a relationship. We all have disagreements, joys, and passion.” 

Providers and families are often uncomfortable or nervous providing education or support for people’s full identity. They regularly share with CQL Quality Enhancement Specialists that this discomfort is due to concerns about perceived risks to the person or others. To support providers and families, learning more about dignity of risk can be helpful. 

To support people receiving services, comprehensive, inclusive sex education includes information about consent, anatomy, communication, building relationships, and sexually transmitted disease prevention. Robust and accessible education is a priority and is effective in reducing the risk of sexual violence. Because sex education at school is not required in most of the United States for children with disabilities, it further increases the importance for organizations to be cognizant of this disparity and ensure people have adequate support and education. 

In addition to sex education, individualized, accessible education incorporating how to prevent, identify, and report abuse, neglect, mistreatment, and exploitation should be provided to all people. Comprehensive risk assessments are valuable to identify individual concerns and support needs. Utilizing this tool, organizations can determine the provision of education, support, advocacy, technology, accessibility, etc. This ensures people are making choices with fully informed consent and have access to the support they want and need.  

Start by Talking

The bottom line is that conversations with people receiving services about sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression are the first steps to supporting someone. Organizations need to ensure that staff having these conversations are able to do so without harming people. Presuming competence is just as critical when addressing sexuality rights as it is around every other aspect of self-determination. Andrew Gurza summarized this very clearly, stating “I wrote a book about sex and disability, was a production consultant for a queer show, threw a sex party for disabled people, starred in adult film, and still, my right to my body and my pleasure as a disabled person is constantly in question.” (Gurza, 2025) 

So, how do you broach the subject? Jacqueline Cooper, CQL Quality Enhancement Specialist, shows her support of people’s identity before she knows it “by simply starting introductions with my name and gender pronouns. It opens the comfort door for the person to do likewise if desired.” She also shared “I approach [sexuality and gender identity] from an open and non-judgmental space and provide people the opportunity to express what their personal definitions of intimacy, sexuality, and identity look like. ‘What does … look like for you?’ Open ended questions assist immensely!” Some people may feel very comfortable sharing this part of themselves, while others may be more cautious. Everyone should be treated with dignity, respect, and acceptance.

Additional Helpful Resources

• DisabilityAfterDark Podcast
• Picture This Documentary
• Andrew Gurza’s Blog
• Drag Syndrome
• Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network
• Comprehensive Sex Education for Youth with Disabilities
• A Call for Inclusion: Improving Sex Ed for Individuals with Disabilities