Clients who have had a head injury have special needs in verbal communication about sexuality. Common needs are:

• more time than the average person to take in information
• more time to process information
• more time to respond
• more repetition
• small chunks of information at a time
• external limit-setting or prompts about appropriate behaviour

People who have had TBI often get easily overloaded with too much information delivered too fast. People who have memory problems need a lot of repetition and reminders.

Taking time to plan how best to deal with a client's sexual issues saves time in the long term. The longer an undesirable behaviour continues, the harder it is to change. There will be a short term increase in work to tackle the problem, but a decrease in effort in the future once it is resolved.

Inappropriate sexual behaviour is not personal. The client is not doing it to intentionally upset the worker. He or she is acting out the effects of the TBI while the worker is present. Keeping the focus on the behaviour that needs to be addressed rather than feeling personally involved helps to maintain distance between the worker and the client's behaviour.