Vulnerability and involvement in drug use and ... - Sex Work Europe

● Access to housing is crucial for a range of needs from low threshold shelter
with planning for the longer term to longer- t e rm stable homes. Housing
e m e rged as an important problem for sex workers in a Home Office funded
evaluation of an arrest re f e rral scheme in King’s Cross, London. Relocation
was mentioned by many as a pre requisite for their discontinuation of sex
work. However, projects need to develop strong links with accommodation
p roviders outside sex work are a s .
● T h e re is an untapped potential for mentoring and peer education in sex work
networks to encourage harm reduction in sex work and drug use and to
encourage and support exiting plans.
The Children at Risk Review conducted as part of the government spending plans 2003-
2006 (Tre a s u ry, 2002) confirms that current provision of childre n ’s services is poorly
developed and lacking an overall strategy to pull them together. This study supports the
review’s recommendations for structural change to better co-ordinate children’s services. The
intention here is to improve service co-ordination so that young people do not fall through
gaps in service networks.
Those we predicted might become trapped on the basis of their vulnerabilities but who
never experienced problematic drug use
T h e re were nine participants in this group. Two of these participants had been exposed to
only one trapping factor giving a weak prediction that they might become trapped. Four
had been exposed to two trapping factors giving a medium prediction that they might
become trapped. The remaining three participants had been exposed to all thre e
trapping factors giving a high prediction that they might become trapped. Cru c i a l l y, none
of these participants re p o rted ever having experienced problematic drug use. Given that
in the whole sample participants’ self-definitions of lifetime freedom from pro b l e m a t i c
d rug use appear reasonable using ACMD (1998) definitions, there is re a s o n a b l e
confidence in this self-re p o rt data. Their absence of problematic drug use by definition
meant that they would not be ‘trapped’ in the mutually re i n f o rcing aspects of pro b l e m a t i c
d rug use and sex work.
Analyses of these interviews confirm a conclusion previously drawn from those pre d i c t e d
and confirmed as ‘non-trapped’. This is that above all else, freedom from problematic drug
use is key to freedom from multiplying vulnerabilities.
‘Trapping’ and ‘exiting’
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