These are challenging times, and once again the impact falls disproportionately on those who live a liminal life. For us at women@thewell supporting women involved in prostitution, particularly street based prostitution, the impact is palpable. The women we support experience multiple issues and challenges: homelessness, mental health issues, histories of abuse and exploitation, being trafficked, substance use issues and many others.
The last few months have passed at both great speed and in a kind of surreal slowness. Our biggest challenge has been balancing the (necessary) short term reactive approach that has been a big part of the response to Covid-19 alongside the need to plan for the longer term. As we approach 14 years of delivering specialist services to women, we must not lose sight of the next 14 years and beyond.
It was fabulous to see the flexible response of funders to the need for immediate changes to service delivery and various funded projects. Equally welcome was the sudden influx of possible funds to support the immediate response, including funds that allowed us to ensure the women we support had access to phones and other technology so we could remain in touch with them over the period of the lockdown. The opening of the Covid hotels was also admirable, meaning we could support women into some form of temporary accommodation for the duration of lockdown. Yes there were challenges, mixed gender accommodation and lack of needs assessments, but the speed of the response in our area was generally helpful.
As time went on, we saw women struggle to manage in this accommodation and return to the streets or other unsafe accommodation arrangements, so our outreach team went back out onto the streets after a few weeks of lockdown to provide what support they could. Now our building based services are reopening, although they look nothing like they did before COVID-19: the amount of PPE and health and safety procedures will necessarily prevent us returning to anything like the old model of working for a considerable period. But the support is still needed, so we are working to review our strategy and service provision so we can meet the needs of women trapped in the sex trade for the foreseeable future in this new and uncertain world.
What we need most now is for funders to help us in thinking about the future: like many other charities we will face a cliff edge of funding in the next year, at this time in the year we would usually be working on ensuring the gaps in funding are minimal, but many funders are still operating in the reactive space, and so there will be gaps in what we can provide. With the trustees, we face some tough decisions as we look to the future.
There are also opportunities and new needs arising for the women we support. Prostitution is never safe, but in a time of pandemic the risks are magnified: the economy has taken a substantial hit, unemployment is rising and along with that the potential routes out of prostitution, including the already challenging task of securing employment will move further out of reach of the women we support. The impact of the enforced isolation and increased experiences of violence bring increased psychological difficulties for women, triggering past trauma and creating new fears and anxieties.
We are grateful for a generous donation that will help us to set up and develop a psychosocial support programme that we hope will enable women to address some of these current issues and past experiences in a creative and supportive way that acknowledges and works around the limitations of traditional counselling methodologies. We are seeking additional investment for our outreach team, who are needed now more than ever: increasing numbers of women find themselves without safe places to stay, and we will continue to deliver advocacy services for women alongside our specialist exiting programmes and our employability project - although the practical way these are delivered will change. We are excited to be developing our training and consultancy offer to include access to our specialist expertise via online platforms. And we are working hard to lobby for the needs of the women we support, locally, nationally and internationally.
As these revisions to our practical support are implemented and updated following the advice and guidance form the authorities, we find ourselves navigating complex ethical questions on a daily basis.
Reflecting on both our Catholic and Radical Feminist routes, we look with curiosity on the political responses to COVID-19: while the health advice is clear, the political implementation is less so. The concerns we have - that I have - are around how starkly the pandemic has shown those on the edges of society to be devalued. The clearest example of this for me is that in the media industry the filming of mainstream television is on hold unless it can be done with physical distance, but filming in the porn industry continues, and suggestions for how to make this ‘safe’ (and I use the term ‘safe’ with extreme prejudice) have been issued to support this. The madness of this is inexplicable: in some European countries with exploitative legal settlements around prostitution, such as Germany, you cannot get a haircut or a facial, but the brothels have reopened.
The conclusion here for me is simply this: some people’s lives are seen as worth less, or perhaps they are seen as just worthless. This goes against everything the church teaches, and it is the church, alongside others, who must challenge this before we end up living in a society where each human life is not valued equally.
As we face our own challenges, however hard they are we must act to ensure that those on the edge of society are not forgotten, and we must act now.
Caro Hattersley is director of women@thewell, an organisation that seeks to provide support to women who are seeking to exit prostitution, and those who have previously exited but are experiencing difficulties in their daily lives.