"YouTube still"At a focus group on street sex workers’ health, Angelica is a natural orator. She is funny and passionate, and shares her life’s successes and struggles with hard-won conviction. At almost 60, she has experienced homelessness and addiction, as well as physical and mental health problems. She spent eight years working on the streets of Hackney as a sex worker.
Like many others in the room, Angelica says she owes her life to Open Doors – a pioneering NHS sex worker support service, regarded as among the best in the country. Where she feels other services have judged her, or have been insensitive to her trauma, she says of Open Doors: “They understand me.”
Person after person credits the service as a lifeline: “I’ve got my house, I’m clean six years”; “Open Doors harmonised me”; “I would have died without Open Doors.” And the high praise is substantiated by outcomes. Open Doors has significantly reduced ill health and deaths – and improved wellbeing and safety – among the thousands of sex workers they’ve supported.
