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Many practitioners believe that people with learning difficulties have the same right as anyone else to behave sexually, provided they don't adversely affect anyone else. They believe we should help people with learning difficulties to live their sexual lives carefully, safely and in fulfilling ways.

In spite of the fact that training materials about sexuality and learning difficulties are available, many UK practitioners are diffident about working on this topic. Though they know what they might do, they are unsure whether they ought to do it, for both moral and legal reasons. These uncertainties may be part of the reason why many workers in learning difficulties still seem to want to avoid such issues.

During a trip to Poland I had expected that, due to the influence of Catholicism, I would meet with the denial of the sexuality of people with learning difficulties. However, most people I met shared the view that they are sexual beings. Not only that, but the problems they raised overlapped substantially with those that trouble colleagues in the UK.

To deny a person's sexuality is to treat him or her as less fully a person. However, to accept that a person is sexual does not necessarily imply that it is right, or in her best interests, for her to have an active sexual life, whether on her own, or with another.

In the UK the view that it is OK to facilitate the sexual development of people with learning difficulties is common. By contrast, many colleagues in Poland believe that rather than facilitating their sexual behaviour and working to ensure that it is, for example, safe and properly consensual, people with learning difficulties should not be sexually active unless married. Such colleagues are anxious to find ways of distracting people with learning difficulties from sexual activity.

What we do about the sexuality of people with learning difficulties is a matter of practice. But it is also a matter of morality, because it depends upon how we think it is right to treat people. Does the fact that we recognise and want to respect the sexuality of people with learning difficulties necessarily mean we should accept that they will behave sexually? Do we have to become involved not only in facilitating their understanding of sexual and relationship matters, but also their sexual behaviour?

What about those people for whom sexual feelings are a source of frustration rather than joy? Is it morally acceptable to work not to facilitate and develop their sexuality, but to find ways to help them temper their sexual feelings, to sublimate them and to find purposes that are more obtainable and productive? Would their lives necessarily be less full if we adopted this approach?

Gavin Fairbairn is professor of professional development in nursing and midwifery, University of Glamorgan.