Women's Safety and Support Service

Descriptions

Women's Safety and Support Service provides women involved in on-street survival sex with Outreach and Case Management support with a long term aim of supporting them out of sex industry. The project is committed to working with partners to deal with problems relating to Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG).

Tower Hamlets Council is committed to end sexual exploitation through selling survival sex as reflected in in the VAWG and Women's Safety Strategy Action Plan 2024-2029 and in the VAWG and Women's Safety Strategy 2024-2029. It continues to be a priority area for the Council, with objectives related to this in the Tower Hamlets Strategic plan for 2022/2026. The Tower Hamlets Substance Misuse Strategy 2020-2025 also places an emphasis on the need to tackle domestic violence and exploitation through sex industry by providing support services such as drug and alcohol treatment, mental health and sexual health clinics.

This project will continue to benefit the community in the following ways by:

Providing support for women to exit the sex industry and as a result reducing the number of sex industry related problems such as ASB, human trafficking, sexual grooming, pimping, drug dealing, robbery, noise, litter, harassment, soliciting and kerb-crawling.

Providing women who sell survival sex with support around safeguarding, safety planning, accessing accommodation, substance misuse services, physical health & mental health services

Supporting women in reporting instances of violence and sexual violence to the Police and statutory services

Provide a borough-wide partnership response in supporting women who sell survival sex in various contexts via the Tower Hamlets Prostitution Partnership (THPP).