Sex workers seeing red
A funding spat between the ACON and the Scarlet Alliance will result in the two parting company from 1 July this year.
ACON’s Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) was a member of the national sex workers association, Scarlet Alliance. The annual membership fee, based on a sliding scale of 0.5 percent of SWOP’s total funding, had been waived for in-kind services such as a shared staff member and photocopying.
Scarlet Alliance decided at its annual conference to request a cash payment from 2010, prompting the ACON board to pull the plug on SWOP’s involvement. ACON claims the fee was $5000, a figure disputed by Scarlet Alliance.
We’d prefer to put that sort of money into direct services. We’d be faced with taking that money away from somewhere else. As it is we can’t do as much as we’d want to, particularly in terms of outreach, ACON president Mark Orr said.
He said ACON still wanted to work with Scarlet Alliance, which had done great work for sex workers, but ACON preferred to do its own outreach in brothels and on the streets via its own surveys through SWOP.
Working with sex workers is still fundamental to our job, we’re not stepping away from that, Orr said.
We’re still funded by NSW Health to work with sex workers, and we’ll still have our full-time sex worker outreach officer.
Scarlet Alliance president Janelle Fawkes said sex workers would be the losers in the fallout.
When the sector is working in partnership it increases our strength at state and national level in our capacity to address the unacceptably high levels of stigma and discrimination against sex workers, she said.
Scarlett Alliance offers a safety net for members experiencing financial hardship, with reduced or waived fees. Fawkes said she understood SWOP was not in that position, rather that the ACON board would simply not authorise the payment. The Scarlett Alliance executive will meet next week to consider its response to the ACON board’s decision.
Scarlet Alliance’s recent work has included a survey of the needs of HIV positive sex workers, most of whom came from the Sydney gay community.
The author of that report and more than 25 other sex workers and peer educators, many from the gay community and former SWOP employees, signed a letter to ACON asking it to reconsider (see page 13).
Former SWOP coordinator norrie mAy-welby told Sydney Star Observer that Scarlet Alliance membership would ensure accountability to the people the organisation serves.
She was concerned that services to sex workers accounted for roughly 20 percent of ACON’s government funding, but the decisions by the ACON board were being made by people who had no experience as sex workers.
Ummmm why on earth have you used a pic “that I took” and it’s all N.T S.W.O.P mags, community education and a legal rights handbook from SWOP NT?
How bizzaarreee..
Jessie a sex worker that uses
SWOP NT
How can non-membership of Scarlet Alliance be sanctioned by the ACON board while ACON is a sponsor of Queerscreen? How is this fair?
Wow, it has taken a long time for me to hear this sort of support for the Regional Outreach position that used to be so important – and the amazing work achieved over years of engaging sex workers through consistency, empathy, courage and resilience of the ex-workers at SWOP.Ra Ra to those who are choosing to speak up. I am appalled by the general move of all health related services back to the ‘Medical Model’ – without experienced staff who are street wise and experienced much ground that had been gained is now lost. What was once a wonderful support service (SWOP) seems to have lost their aims and objectives! Especially now in this economic climate we need hands-on service delivery that will provide what the ‘clients’ want and need to stay safe.
The unceremonious ending of such a long partnership between Scarlet Alliance and ACON requires further transparency. If ACON have reasons for withdrawing membership they should explain these to the sex worker community – this monetary reason is dismissive and negligible.
Sex workers are part of the communities acknowledged and included in the national and state HIV policies. ACON as a GLBT organization should realize they are no longer in an position to act as caretakers of SWOP.
SWOP once a beacon and model peer organization is rapidly loosing ground. ACON in its solipsistic decision making are firmly positioning sex workers outside of organizational and strategic development.
I think that the actions of the ACON board and its Executive Director in preventing SWOP from being a member of the sex industry’s national peak body is nothing short of outrageous.
The omission of the need to be a peer from the essential selection criteria in the advertised job description seems to indicate that ACON believes that sex workers are incapable of determining their own needs and are unable to manage the SWOP project with any degree of competency. This is not only downright insulting but clearly demonstrates the ongoing battle that sex workers have in challenging community stereotypes as well as institutionalised hierarchy and opposition from within the AIDS Council.
I am now left to wonder whether the ACON Board and Executive Director would consider a middle aged Christian lady who lives in the suburbs with 2.3 children a suitable applicant and the rightest person to manage the Gay Men’s Health Project? And one last parting shot, how much money did the ACON board agree to invest with the Aids Trust? And was there a return on the investment to redirect back into “direct services?
Congratulations to the Irate NSW Sex Workers who wrote the letter to the ACON Board. I have often thought about writing a letter as I too have been frustrated by SWOP in recent years.
I have been a sex worker for over 7 years and often travel around NSW and Qld, working in regional towns and cities. I use to often ring Jules -“ the regional outreach worker at SWOP – for information and support, and looked forward to her visits if we were in the same town at the same time. It was a huge shock to hear that she had left SWOP (though through another sex worker friend I found out that she had resigned after being illegally fired and then reinstated when the union stepped in. I would too.) Since that time -“ about 3 years ago -“ SWOP has NEVER advertised that position and has NEVER published in the Professional or on their website who we can contact for regional sex work info. The times that I have rung SWOP I actually get told to ring Scarlet Alliance as -œthey’re the sex workers who will know. The sexual health clinic people are great but really -“ unless you’ve actually -œbeen in the room you just can’t debrief with someone or ask certain questions unless you know that person has been/ or still is, a sex worker . SWOP (and ACON) always states they are a -˜state-based organisation’. I think that’s a joke. Sex workers don’t just work in Surry Hills you know -“ we work everywhere! In the new edition of the Professional that I received a few days ago, the Aboriginal outreach worker talks about doing regional outreach. Why is it ok for her to do that and yet the regional co-coordinator position can still remain vacant after all this time?? What are they doing with the money??
Annoyed in Armidale sex worker