Big Interview: An escape from prostitution - Trudy Hannington, manager, Streetreach

Hannington's outreach work with young prostitutes has earned the scheme an impressive reputation. This month she was named the 2004 Yorkshire Woman of Achievement, in awards organised by the Sue Ryder Care Wheatfields Hospice. Hannington was surprised, but not just in the usual modest way of award winners. "Prostitution is a taboo subject so schemes working with prostitutes never tend to win. You usually get short listed and something else wins," she says. But that changed this year, suggesting that awareness of prostitution and its causes is growing.

The reality of prostitution, Hannington says, is that 99 per cent of the women are on the streets because of heroin, and half of those are also involved in crack. While in the past some women were on the streets because of poverty, she says the large number of government initiatives and more flexible benefits means it is no longer a question of poverty per se. "Now it's all because of drugs. The girls will have robbed from their families and been thrown out," she says. A smaller number might have a boyfriend who is addicted and who pressures them into selling sex to fund his habit. Streetreach helps the women to leave prostitution.