How can health services be better for street sex-working women?
Our wonderful Dr Lucy, with others at the Centre for Academic Primary Care (University of Bristol), has published her key findings from national research.
Quick summary here in the vid ?
Transcript:
“Hello, I’m Lucy, I’m a GP with the Homeless Health Service and I do clinic regularly here at One25, which I love. So I’ve recently done some research, trying to find out around the country, what is provided for street sex workers in terms of healthcare…
“So it’s hugely important to be non-judgemental; people who have street sex-worked experience huge levels of stigma and are often really fearful and struggle to trust professionals. “Flexibility is also really key. If people are struggling with substance misuse and addictions, and living in situations where they may be exposed to violence, may be exposed to coercive control from various people, then when they have a health issue here and now ideally we need a system that can respond to that as quickly as possible. If you give somebody an appointment in 3 weeks’ time at 8 o’clock in the morning… they’re not going to be able to do it.
“Partnership working is hugely important – we are all humans with a variety of needs and we don’t fit into nice boxes where we can just fix our substance misuse issues and then attend to our mental health, and then attend to our physical health, and then attend to our housing… We need to be able to partner with all the agencies who work around that and really work around the individual to support them.
“I would really like to thank all the participants who shared their really valuable insights. I thoroughly enjoyed working at One25 and learning from the experience here, and I became aware that there’s probably lots of expertise around the country and really exciting things that people have created or worked around to make access to healthcare possible and so it’s really great opportunity to hear from things that are actually going well and how we can amplify those voices.”
