Accessible Consent Education

Working Together for Relational Safety: Partnerships in Inclusive Consent Education

Effective consent education for students with disability requires collaborative, cross‑sector approaches that draw on the expertise of educators, families, allied health professionals, and community members with lived experience. This presentation reports on the initial stages of a doctoral research project that brought together professionals across disciplines to conceptualise best-practice consent education. This presentation, therefore, examines how partnerships can strengthen the design and delivery of inclusive, developmentally appropriate consent education. By foregrounding collaboration as both a pedagogical and systemic practice, the presentation highlights how shared expertise can transform the ways consent is conceptualised, taught, and supported across diverse educational settings.

Through a review of national policy, current definitions of consent, and a critical analysis of sexuality education pedagogy, it was identified that siloed approaches to consent education often fail to meet the needs of disabled and neurodivergent students. Educators are frequently left to interpret policy independently, without access to the interdisciplinary knowledge required to support diverse communication modes, relational needs, and trauma‑informed practice. These gaps are compounded by policy frameworks that rely on narrow, binary, and individualised understandings of consent, which do not reflect the relational, contextual, and developmental realities of students’ lives.

In response to these limitations, the collaborative partnership and doctoral researcher created a three‑dimensional definition of consent that foregrounds relationality, communication diversity, and contextual understanding. This model provides a shared conceptual foundation that can be used across sectors to align practice, reduce fragmentation, and support consistent messaging for students and families. Drawing on disability justice and trauma‑informed principles, this presentation outlines how collaborative partnerships can enhance curriculum design, classroom practice, and student outcomes by ensuring that consent education is accessible, culturally responsive, and attuned to the lived experiences of disabled young people.

Overall, the presentation highlights a partnership‑driven approach that led to the development of an expansive definition of consent and a best‑practice conceptualisation grounded in community expertise. These collaborations also generated detailed insights into the consent‑related skills required of both educators and learners, expanding current understandings of what knowledge, communication strategies, and relational competencies are necessary for safe and meaningful participation. By showcasing how these partnerships informed both conceptual and practical dimensions of the work, the presentation demonstrates how educators can move beyond traditional boundaries of role and sector to create more holistic, responsive, and accessible consent education.

Additionally, by positioning consent education as a shared responsibility rather than a classroom‑isolated task, this work demonstrates how partnerships can transform both pedagogy and student experience. The presentation concludes by outlining the next phases of the doctoral project, which will further refine the model through participatory co-design with disabled young people and will be used to develop co-designed consent resources for young people with disability.

Learning Objective 1 — What will the audience gain?

Delegates will gain practical, evidence-informed strategies for building and sustaining collaborative partnerships that strengthen consent education for students with disability. They will learn how interdisciplinary expertise can enhance curriculum design, support communication diversity, and improve relational safety and learning outcomes. The session will equip educators with concrete examples of how to integrate allied health, family knowledge, and lived experience expertise into classroom practice. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how collaborative approaches can transform both pedagogy and student engagement in consent education.

Learning Objective 2 — Relevance to “Beyond Boundaries”

This presentation embodies the conference theme by demonstrating how cross-sector collaboration breaks down systemic, professional, and pedagogical boundaries that often limit inclusive consent education. It illustrates how partnerships between educators, allied health professionals, and lived experience experts can create more responsive and contextually attuned approaches that better meet the needs of students with disability. By highlighting the transformative potential of shared expertise, the session shows how collaborative practice can move schools beyond traditional silos and towards more holistic, relational models of support. In doing so, it offers a practical example of what it means to work “beyond boundaries” in real educational settings.