Online Workshop: Getting Buy-In for Sexuality Education for People With I/DD, Even in Conservative Communities

Workshop Summary

You believe sexuality education is essential for people with I/DD. The parents, administrators, and agencies around you may only see the risks. This workshop examines what’s actually at stake when we don’t provide it, why people resist, and how to bring them along without pushing them away.

Note: This is a pre-recorded, 90-minute workshop. Instant access upon purchase. Includes workshop slides, the NACDD Report, and the live session chat transcript.

Why This Workshop Exists

Most professionals who work in sexuality education have heard some version of these responses:

• “I don’t want to open that can of worms.”
• “It will only give them ideas.”
• “What if parents find out?”
• “We could get sued.”

These are not fringe reactions in conservative communities — they are the norm. And they are exactly what this workshop is designed to help you navigate.

The cost of not navigating them is real. When sexuality education is not provided to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the outcomes do not disappear — they just become more dangerous. Unwanted pregnancies. Sexual victimization. Legal entanglements over behaviors that education could have prevented. Loneliness. Isolation.

As Katherine McLaughlin and a panel of four educators who have worked in deeply conservative communities make clear, the risk is not in providing this education. The risk is in withholding it.

This workshop makes that case — with data, with framework, with arguments — and then goes further: it gives you strategies for having those conversations, one relationship at a time.

Strategies from Conservative Communities

Katherine leads this workshop alongside four panelists who bring decades of experience working in some of the most resistant communities in the country:

• Anna Whitfield and Jenny Ostermiller, both from Utah, work in communities where roughly 70–80% of residents identify as Mormon.
• Marcy Davis, a victim services professional from New Mexico who works with indigenous and rural communities where disability is often hidden in the home.
• Mary Chambogarde, Community Inclusion Coordinator for the Michigan Developmental Disabilities Council, who helped lead a statewide initiative on sexuality education for people with I/DD.

Together, they walk through a behavior change framework — the Transtheoretical Model, developed by Prochaska and DiClemente — that helps professionals assess where someone is in their readiness to change: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation.

The model matters because the strategy varies by stage. You do not push pre-contemplators. You build trust, ask open-ended questions, and help them begin to see the risk of staying where they are.

Jenny speaks plainly about what actually works in communities that resist: 

“The real answer to how you reach people with this mindset is an answer that kind of sucks, but it is time, time, credibility and being humble, and those are hard things, hard, hard, hard things.” 

The panelists go through scenario after scenario — the parent who insists her child would never masturbate because they are Mormon, the agency afraid of liability, the administrator worried about noncompliance — and explain what they did, what worked, and what they wish they had done differently.

And sometimes, buy-in looks different from what professionals expect. After Anna and Jenny ran sexuality education and self-advocacy training at one agency, the administrator offered what she intended as a complaint: 

“We can always tell that you’ve been here because our clients go on and on about their rights and their self-advocacy, and it’s really hard to manage and control them after you leave.” 

The panelists hear that as evidence that the work landed.

Who This Workshop Is For

This workshop is for sexuality educators, direct support professionals, school staff, social workers, therapists, case managers, and anyone working to bring sexuality education to people with I/DD in communities where resistance is real — from parents, guardians, administrators, or agency leadership. It is especially relevant if you work in religious or culturally conservative communities, rural or underserved areas, or institutional settings where compliance culture and liability concerns have kept sexuality education off the table. Self-advocates who want to understand why this education is sometimes withheld from people with I/DD — and what it takes to change that — are welcome too.

What You Will Learn

Understand the negative impact of withholding sexuality education from people with I/DD — and how to make that case to parents, administrators, and agencies who see providing it as the greater risk

Identify the most common reasons people resist sexuality education for people with I/DD, including religious values, cultural norms, liability fears, and the belief that people with I/DD have no sexual needs

Apply the Transtheoretical Model (Stages of Change) to assess where someone is in their readiness for change — and adapt your approach accordingly

Use strategies tailored to pre-contemplators and contemplators: open-ended questions, motivational engagement, and approaches that invite rather than push

Navigate common resistance scenarios — “it will give them ideas,” “they can’t process this information,” “we’ll get sued” — with field-tested, panelist-proven responses

Build the long-term trust, credibility, and relationships that make sustainable buy-in possible in even the most conservative communities

Workshop Presenters

Katherine McLaughlin, M.Ed., AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator, is the Founder, CEO, and Lead Trainer for Elevatus Training. She has been a sexuality educator and trainer for over 30 years. As a national expert on sexuality and intellectual and developmental disabilities, she trains professionals and parents, as well as people with I/DD, to become sexual self-advocates and peer sexuality educators.⁠