How can workers in Scotland better support women who sell or exchange sex?

In March 2022 the Encompass Network held an event for workers to showcase the range of resources available to improve practice and increase their understanding of the needs of women who sell or exchange sexual activity in Scotland.

Around 150 workers attended from areas such as social work, sexual health, housing services, criminal justice, prison, women’s aid, rape crisis, fire and rescue service, money advice, to name just a few. The diversity of workers present reflects the range of services that women who sell or exchange sex regularly access for support and highlights why it is so vital that workers across all areas understand the spectrum of women’s needs.

During the event we had the opportunity to ask attendees about their views on supporting women in this context and below are some of their responses:

How many have supported women who sell/exchange sexual activity?
In a quick poll, workers attending were asked to share whether they have supported women involved in selling or exchanging sexual activity in their service or organisation, and 66% of attendees said they have:

​What are some of the challenges of supporting women involved in selling or exchanging sexual activity?

• Lack of trust in services 
• Stigma  
• Lack of awareness that support exists 
• Inability to access services due to constraints such as language, location, lack of awareness, financial situation or the legal status of women. 
  
  

What could be done to improve support for women involved in selling or exchanging sexual activity?

• Specialist and consistent long-term support services
• Willingness to ask service users about involvement in selling/exchanging sex 
• Improved multi-agency and partnership work 
• Ensuring women know what services are available to them 
• Non-judgmental and flexible services that are open to talk about the issues women face
• Safe spaces for women who are or have been involved in the 'sex industry.'
  
  

What else do workers need to better support women?
One of our final questions to the audience asked about the additional resources workers would like to receive to better support women. Interestingly, most of the options offered received the same number of votes. The three top answers were: access to awareness-raising resources, training on key themes and information on how to support women in specific settings.

Reflections from workers
At the end of the event, the workers shared some of their key learnings from the event. Some of their takeaways and comments included:

• Knowing there is a range of support, advice and information available 
• Awareness of the agencies that can offer specialist support 
• A better sense of the challenges women face and how multi-faceted their needs are 
• Knowing that services across different sectors encounter the same issues when engaging and supporting women who sell or exchange sex and that there is a need for services to work together to support women meaningfully. 

 
Upcoming training
If you would like to find out more about the needs of women who sell or exchange sex in specific areas like housing, safety, mental health, problematic substance use among others, visit our events page to sign up to our upcoming training and sign up to our bulletin to receive resources and details of our events straight to your inbox.