UKNSWP - UK Network of Sex Work Projects

Networking & Sharing
UK NSWP is an umbrella organisation which brings together projects who are offering some sort of frontline support services to people involved in sex work. Affiliation is voluntary and members are asked to sign up to the missions statement. A key aim of UKNSWP is to enable the sharing of information and good practice between sex work support projects.

Our Members
Member organisations are diverse and include; those that are sex worker-led, health authority-managed, children’s charities, other voluntary organisations, agencies with a faith based ethos and /or harm reduction & human rights. Some member organisations have sexual health and HIV prevention as a major focus for their work, others have a drugs, sex worker rights, or wider health remit. Protection from violence, promoting safety, housing support, education, and alternative lifestyle choices and the sexual exploitation of young people are also addressed. Member organisations may be projects specifically for sex workers, or may address sex work issues within other agendas, such as youth work, drugs, sexual health, health promotion, or work with gay lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Individual members include academics and others with expertise in the area of sex work.

Expertise
Between them, member organisations have direct contact with thousands of sex workers across the United Kingdom, and several have been active in this field for over ten years. UKNSWP therefore represents a huge body of expertise in the field of sex work and sex work support service provision, primarily informed by the practical experience of its members, that are in daily contact with sex workers from; many sectors, with a diverse range of experiences and from across the country.

An independent voice
UKNSWP is one of the key organisations in the UK to represent sex work projects. There are national networks specialising in HIV, sexual health, drugs, domestic violence and gender issues, but UKNSWP is the key national organisation focusing on sex work. As an independent body, UKNSWP is able to raise policy issues in the public arena, both locally and nationally. This enables public debate on sex work in the UK to benefit from the expertise of those working in sex work projects and see the impacts policies have on the lives of sex workers. Speaking up from this perspectives of sex work support projects, UKNSWP aims to support sex workers and projects that work with them and, through this, improve public policy in this difficult area. UKNSWP has contributed to a range of national policy discussions and reviews relevant to sex work, including:

Information Resources & Specialist Collection on Sex Work
The UKNSWP holds a large collection of; books, research reports, journal articles, project reports, leaflets and other materials; concerning many aspects of sex work in the UK, of both local and national significance. We also hold some information about sex work in other countries. These resource can be accessed by academic and other researchers, as well as by projects, police, media, local government, lawyers, refugee organisations, drugs agencies, charities, etc.

Examples of subjects covered include:

The majority of this material is now held in the UKNSWP Specialist Collection on Sex Work housed by the University of West Scotland in the Robertson Trust Library and Learning Resource Centre, Paisley Campus. A Specialist Collections Librarian, is responsible for managing the collection.

The collection was launched on 21st October 2008. An online list of materials catalogued to date is now available on line.

This is a large collection of material and the cataloguing process is ongoing and will take some months. Periodically as new items are added the online catalogue will be updated. Go to the “Resources / UKNSWP Specialist Collection" section of our website for more information about the collection

We want the collection to grow. A key way of doing this is to ask people to contribute materials on an ongoing basis. We stress ALL TYPES OF MATERIAL ARE WELCOME. So if you are involved in writing a journal article, book or report (be it a research report or a project annual report) please send a final copy to the collection. Equally if you have produced a project leaflet, poster, some sort of resource for sex workers, have art work from arts based sex work related initiatives, please send a copy to the collection. We also can take DVD’s and videos of fictional and non fictional material related to sex work. It is these and the project materials that often are not in traditional academic libraries, so we have the opportunity to build up a specialised resource of such items. Some of you may have historical material electronically or in hard copy, such as project annual reports from some years ago, these would be much welcomed. You may come across material that you have not been involved in producing but is relevant to the collection please send copies it may not be in there. Even information materials that are very outdated will be welcomed by historians and social scientists so do not throw anything away – send it to the special collection.

The special collection can take items in whatever format they are available, so electronic and hard copies are equally welcomed. We want to stress we are encouraging you to send everything you can. If you only have one copy of something, we are able to make copies and return the original to you.

Web Based Resources
UKNSWP makes current reports, newsletters and articles available on it’s Resources Page of the UKNSWP website. So keep an eye out for new publications.
In June 2008 UKNSWP completed a program of Big Lottery Funded activities. This included the production of 3 resources for sex workers;

5 sets of good practice guidance for projects providing support services for sex workers have also been published by UKNSWP as part of the Big Lottery activity. These cover the following topics;

All these resources can be downloaded from the “Resources” section of the UKNSWP website.

Directory & Database of Sex Work Projects in the UK
UKNSWP keeps a database of agencies and projects across the UK that provides health, safety, and other services to sex workers. At present there are over 100 agencies on this database. You can access information about projects in your region in the “Projects” section of this website.

As part of a wider program of Big Lottery Funded activity UKNSWP has produced a “Directory of Services for Sex Workers in the UK” this can be downloaded from the “Resources” section of this website. If you are a sex work support project or a sex worker and would like hard copies of the pocket size booklet please contact info@uknswp.org.uk


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