They arrive at Victoria or King's Cross train stations, a steady trickle of uncertain young women carrying overnight bags stuffed with all that's needed for a new life. Leaving home with a feeling of wanting to be "anywhere but here" they arrive in the capital, knowing no-one and with nowhere to go. After a few hours trying to make sense of the chaos, a man approaches, makes a joke and offers to buy them a coffee. He helps them find a flat, and instantly becomes their ally and protector.
Liz Warrior, the manager of the New Horizon Youth Centre, near London's King's Cross offers this apparently innocuous exchange as a typical everyday scenario on the streets around the station. "Not all young women who come to London set out to become prostitutes," she says. "There are men whose sole occupation it is to spot vulnerable women and befriend them."
Duped into prostitution
"The apparent concern is flattering if no-one has ever taken much interest in you," explains Warrior. A relationship will build over a few weeks, and one day the issue of money arises. "He might suggest that she sleeps with a 'friend', saying, 'just do this once, it's fifty quid, he's a friend ...'.
He has looked after her, he argues; they need to eat. The first time she does it out of love or because she feels indebted, then she does it because she has no choice." There are other scenarios, but according to Warrior, this is the one that crops up with depressing regularity.
Women's Open Space is a project run at the New Horizon centre. During the day, the centre provides drop-in advice for a cross section of young homeless people. There are housing, health and life skills workers in the building, and access to a laundry, showers and home-cooked meals.
Tailored provision
The New Horizon centre has done outreach work with sex workers for 12 years, but giving them equal access to the facilities on offer has not always been easy. Many of those who attend the centre are "chaotic polydrug users", as the terminology describes them, and have a short fuse and do not mix well. Therefore providing sex workers with a service that meets their specific needs has proved problematic in the past.
"We were keen to get these women to the centre, but it was a volatile mix and the younger guys would whisper about them. The women - who are anything but stupid - would take them on," says Warrior. "There is a lot of prejudice around sex work, and it can be upsetting for the young women, so other than housing advice, they had very little contact with the day service."
In order to target this vulnerable group, Women's Open Space was set up in December 2000. Warrior admits that, at first, the sessions were unproductive: women would eat, sleep and leave. And in early 2001, many young women stopped attending altogether, so the project re-evaluated.
Following the assessment, the centre began to concentrate on using youth work models to develop relationships with the young women, improving their self-esteem so that they were motivated to access services themselves.
Youth workers also experimented with blocking off an area of the large common room to create a warm, welcoming environment with dimmed lights, cushions, candles and incense.
"There was no pressure to talk about drugs or sex work," says Warrior. "For weeks we just played charades. Admittedly, they thought we were a bit strange, but they enjoyed it and kept coming back."
Slowly, women began to talk about the circumstances that had brought them there and what they wanted from the centre. More than anything they wanted to do "normal" things: jewellery making, beauty treatments, and a place where they could come off the street, talk to other women and have their health needs dealt with in a non-clinical environment.
"All the women who come here have been through the same things, there is no shame, no feeling that people are looking down on them," says Warrior.
"Every single day they are ostracised, but here they can lose their labels and start to see themselves as young women." There are now between 15 and 20 women who attend every Women's Open Space session.
Many problems
In King's Cross, sex work is closely linked to drug taking. Many of the young women are addicted to crack and heroin. The life of a crack or heroin addict is too unstructured to maintain rent on a flat or allow regular work in a sauna, but street-based sex work is the best way to get money quickly to feed a habit. The boyfriend may well be pimp and dealer combined, or the woman can be working to score for her partner.
Domestic violence is also rife. These young women are often extremely isolated: surviving on the streets means cutting ties with family and being pragmatic about sex work. "It's easier to shrug off guilt when there isn't someone reminding you who you used to be," says Warrior. "If you are working every night to feed your habit, you have to block out the danger and the shame. It can be many years before women can begin to fully comprehend what they've been through."
When the project's outreach workers make a successful contact on the street, it may be that the woman needs immediate medical attention for ulcers, skin and chest problems or help with housing. It may be that she likes the home cooking and seeing a friendly face, or the prospect of a shower and clean clothes. Typically, the project will be the young women's only support.
The project also does not make the young women give up drugs and sex work before they attend. Instead, the emphasis is on minimising harm, giving advice on living as safely as possible, building trust and slowly empowering the women to break the cycle of sex, drugs and domestic violence.
Positive outcomes
Staff and volunteers at Women's Open Space celebrate small victories; consistent attendance or a phone call to say they can't make it shows that the young women value the project and also that their self-esteem has improved to a point where they know they will be missed. But the women are not just passive recipients: they take an active part in running the centre.
This year two women who attended came up with a peer education project.
Carrie, a young woman in her early twenties and Jo, in her thirties, (not their real names) wanted to come in and talk to young people at the centre about drugs, prostitution and mental health. "Carrie isn't alarmist, but describes the mundane aspects," says Warrior. "They ask her what it was like using crack, and she says, 'just take a look at me'. She's very emaciated, has no teeth and is old before her time. That's a very stark message for a rosy-cheeked 16-year-old to hear from someone just a few years older than they are."
Because Women's Open Space is seen as a safe haven, older women have brought teenage runaways to the centre, where they can be returned home or put into sheltered accommodation. But a young woman is a valuable commodity on the streets of King's Cross, and a woman who takes a 14-year-old girl away from the streets can be putting herself in great danger.
"This is a group of young women who have no power whatsoever," says Warrior. "They're constantly defined from the outside: drug user, sex worker. But we work with them as young women." By providing respite from the streets, women are drawn back into public life. At Women's Open Space, where a smile can be the start of a journey, no gains, no matter how small, go unnoticed.
CASE STUDY - SW5 supports male sex workers
SW5 offers free and confidential services to male sex workers in the Earl's Court area of west London, most of whom are under 30. As well as information, outreach services and advice on housing, health and legal issues, it offers one-to-one counselling, complementary health therapies and a drop-in centre with a cafe, internet access and laundry facilities. Like Women's Open Space, SW5 is funded by the Glimmer of Hope Foundation.
Cieran McKinney, director of SW5, says: "One of the reasons that we provide a cafe and laundry facilities is that it gives people a simple reason for coming here without the need for too much soul-searching to begin with." SW5 is a harm reduction project and improvement in an individual's self-esteem is regarded as the most important outcome. It provides young men with help and support regardless of whether they wish to leave sex work.
It has also begun a new service to reach out to youth groups, schools and care homes to educate and inform young people on the issues involved in sex work, especially the ways in which young people may find themselves exploited.
JENNY'S STORY
Jenny (not her real name) is 21 years old, and used to visit Women's Open Space during the day but wouldn't speak to the other women or the youth workers. Six months later, she is still using drugs and still sex working, but coming to the centre has changed her completely.
"At first she didn't admit to taking drugs, but now she's taking out condoms, she's back in touch with her social worker and, more or less, manages to keep to her appointments," says Liz Warrior, manager of New Horizon. "When she began to tell us personal information, it was an indicator that she was rebuilding her trust in people. We were always there, and knowing that people care for you is important. She may not say much but she smiles, and now she's coming here and asking us for services. It may not be much but it's a breakthrough because, in some way, she's taking control of her life."
"Now she's taking out condoms and is back in touch with her social worker"
