National Ugly Mugs is already an essential service for sex workers – preventing crime, reducing violence and providing support when harm occurs.
Now we want to co-develop tools with sex workers to help them seek justice, promote wellbeing and make informed decisions about their work within and outside sex industries.
Sex workers may choose to leave sex work for a variety of reasons; some in response to an urgent need, and others as part of longer-term career goals. Regardless of the reason, multiple barriers exist for sex workers wanting to access the world of mainstream work. Gaps on CVs, a lack of training opportunities, barriers from disabilities or other forms of marginalisation and the stigma of sex work itself create complications in ensuring that sex workers can become part of traditional workplaces.
Our Vocation, Vocation, Vocation campaign aims to do just that. We want to provide dedicated resources designed with sex workers, for sex workers, that understand the unique barriers that they face in moving to alternative forms of employment or income, and help them to mitigate these. We would like to support people to reach their work goals, and help to remove the barriers associated with moving from sex work into traditional employment. We will hire a caseworker to support this work to create these resources as well as provide tailored one-on-one support.
Our work will provide sex workers with the information and resources that they need to make decisions about their working practices, and removing some of the unique barriers which prevent them from having full freedom of choice about how they work and what they do. We will help sex workers to create work or education arrangements which meet their financial needs, have autonomy and flexibility, and provide the time and money to care for their own, or others’, physical and mental health.
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Aim 1: We will employ a vocational support caseworker specifically to support sex workers choosing to leave sex industries or change their financial reliance on sex work. They will be able to provide one-to-one advice on career planning, vocational support, and advice on accessing financial and educational resources.
Aim 2: We will integrate the Universal Credit application tool developed as part of Catalyst Challenge 9 with our existing website to support sex workers in applying for financial resources.
Aim 3: We will develop a series of resources offering guidance to sex workers on applying for jobs, creating CVs and cover letters, accessing training, accessing Universal Credit and other support to move away from sex work if they choose to do so.
Aim 4: We will continue to provide casework support to sex workers who have experienced harm or violence at work, helping them to find healing and justice, as well as our reporting and alerting system to prevent crime and reduce violence.
