Promoting sexual well-being in social work education and practice

This paper explores the importance of including sexual well-being within social work practice and education. Social workers often work with individuals for whom opportunities for sexual expression are limited and who face discriminatory attitudes. Sexual well-being is a global concern, and is particularly relevant considering international interest in the influence of notions of well-being on mental and physical health. Implementation of new social care policy in England, underpinned by the well-being principle, provides practitioners with the opportunity to explore what is meaningful to individual’s well-being through person-centred approaches to practice. There is currently little coverage of sexual well-being within social work education, this means students and practitioners lack the knowledge and skills to challenge barriers. Promotion of the concept of sexual citizenship, with its associated rights and responsibilities, enables social workers to engage in rights focused practice. Sexual well-being is a sensitive subject and the social and personal barriers practitioners may experience in addressing this topic are explored

'I never felt like she was just doing it for the money': Disabled men's intimate (gendered) realities of purchasing sexual pleasure and intimacy

Scholarly enquiry into the interrelationships of disability and commercial sex remains seriously under-represented within disability and sexuality research. This article, however, draws upon the sexual stories of heterosexual disabled men in order to explore their embodied realities of purchasing of sex, pleasure and intimacy from non-disabled female sex workers. A thematic analysis of these sexual stories revealed multiple and complex motivations for, and experiences of, purchasing of sex, pleasure and intimacy; a purchase ultimately shaped by men’s social and political positioning as disabled and, as with the motivations and experiences of heterosexual non-disabled men, by discourses of hegemonic masculinity and heteronormative sexuality. Given the dearth of research in this area, a number of questions are identified which make important contributions to transdisciplinary knowledges of disabled sexualities, commercial sex work and disabled sexual citizenship