By Us, For Us: A Needs and Risk Assessment of Sex Worker in the Lower Mainland and Southern Vancouver Island

 

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Art: Lady D | Living a Violated Life (Collage poster)

Excerpt from the Executive Summary:

In a context of the global COVID-19 pandemic and criminalized sex work, and with results from a rapid needs and risks assessment done in March 2020, we set out to assess detailed needs and risks of sex workers in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland and southern Vancouver Island. This assessment was set to the background of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), and an overdose crisis.

Recommendations for organizations include:
• increasing peer programming and professional development for current and former sex workers;
• actively supporting cooperative sex worker initiatives, including shared workplaces;
• providing legal aid services;
• partnering with healthcare services to create and support health programs to meet sex workers’ unique and diverse needs, including reliable, non-stigmatizing counselling, and Indigenous-specific services;
• partnering with disability advocacy organizations and im/migration advocacy organizations to work towards shared goals;
• continued reporting of harm to police and expanding reporting of harm by police;
• forming professional relationships with police to share information; and,
• continued calls for police reforms and to keep sex worker spaces free of police presence.

 

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