About

SAAIL is a participatory qualitative research project based at Manchester Metropolitan University that aims to explore and represent autistic adults' intimate lives in affirmative ways.  

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Rationale

Intimate and sexual relationships play a significant role in most adults’ lives, and the presence, absence, and quality of these relationships can impact our physical, mental, and sexual health and our overall sense of well-being. Healthy intimate relationships can play an important role in providing social support and mitigating the risks of loneliness.

Our society is set up according to neurotypical dating and relational scripts. A lack of awareness amongst non-autistic (allistic) people around experiences of neurodiversity and how communication, relational and sensory differences may play out in dating and intimate situations can cause barriers for autistic people.

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In current social care policy and services in England, there is almost no focus on autistic adults’ desire to have safe and pleasurable sexual relationships. Research on autistic people’s experiences of intimacy and relationships (outside of that which focuses on “problematic” or “deviant” sexual behaviour) is very limited. This is particularly true for autistic adults without co-occurring learning disabilities.

SAAIL is funded by the National Institute for Health Research's  School For Social Care Research, under the broad remit of improving adult social care in England. The project is informed by the social model of disability, which focuses on how normative society can be exclusionary and inaccessible. 

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Objectives

This study will build an evidence base for developing social care support and resources for autistic adults to enjoy intimate and sexual relationships.

It will do this through:

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1. A systematic analysis of documents and a stakeholder mapping exercise to identify and then engage with those who have a stake in, or could inform and support changes to, social care policy and practice so that it meets autistic adults’ intimate relationship needs most appropriately

2. An exploratory qualitative design to gather rich and detailed data on autistic adults’ experiences of and challenges with navigating intimate and sexual relationships throughout their adult lives.

Methods

This study is divided into three work packages (WP):

1. WP1 involves a systematic analysis of local and national health and social care policies, guidance, and documents to explore how they represent the sexual health needs of autistic adults without learning disabilities, and preliminary social care stakeholder analysis

2. WP2 involves gathering qualitative data on participants’ experiences of navigating intimate and sexual relationships throughout their adult lives through interviews and focus groups

3. WP3 involves a series of participatory workshops aimed at translating the research findings for social care impact by involving a wide range of stakeholders. These workshops will produce two Autism and Intimacy Digital Toolkits, one for autistic people and one for social care providers and allistic people

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Participants

This project focuses on autistic people living in England. We aim to include the voices of autistic people of all genders and sexual identities and communities (including those who identify as heterosexual, LGBTQIA+, bisexual, queer, kinky, poly, asexual, aromantic, to name a few examples). We want to hear from people of all  relationship configurations and from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Help us make SAAIL as diverse and inclusive as possible by participating. 

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The project will map out the service providers, social care structures, self advocacy groups, and other individuals and organisations that are already supporting autistic adults' intimate lives. If you know or are part of an organisation doing this work, please get in touch.