Rethink Resources

A lot of staff struggle with the issue of life experience in the sex trade of program workers. Setting aside the value and importance of youth peer workers for a moment, I want to focus on adults here.

Adults have few ways to learn about how to support youth in the sex trade. Years in college and professional programs will rarely, if ever, cover best practices in working with youth in the sex trade. The documentation just isn’t out there yet. However program staff who consciously or unconsciously work with youth in the sex trade try to learn what they can from finding information on their own and develop an understanding from their work experience.

For a few decades now the power of community leadership in programs has taken root in many forms. People who share a life experience (like drug use, violence, disability) should be at the center of developing, implementing and evaluating the success of an effort designed to make a difference in their lives. Now many a critique has been written about the professionalizing of social services that, among other things, resulted in less community leadership. But it still remains a goal for most programs to have community based leadership, even in the most traditional of social service programs.

Again, in services to assist youth in the sex trade somehow, this is still mostly an adult centered discussion. So most programs, when looking for community leadership, are content if they can find adults who shared that experience in the sex trade when they were younger. Which is problematic right there in my mind.

Youth often don’t realize they could ask for more, or it’s been so crushed out of them they don’t fight it. So, tired of another staff person who seems to know apparently nothing about sex trade and reality on the streets, youth express a preference for staff who’ve had life experience in the sex trade over those who don’t.

And I’ve witnessed the power of role models, mentors, someone to confide in who you feel really understands. I think it’s crucial for youth to see caring adults who mirror their experiences and reflect community backgrounds. But just having life experience in the sex trade does not make someone a good youth worker.

In fact, I’ve had to often turn away potential staff and volunteers in the past who were clearly unprepared to support youth but thought their life experience would carry them. It doesn’t. And I have a serious problem with people who want to “work on their issues” by working with youth. This isn’t about you. This is about being an effective ally to youth.

I’ve heard a number of staff who don’t have that life experience in the sex trade struggle with their place. I recommend listening and learning and I appreciate it when someone doesn’t take up so much space that it prevents leadership of people with life experience. Insisting on hearing intimate details about past experiences of people who’ve been in the sex trade, thinking their “story” is all they have to share, and relegating staff who’ve been on the streets to ‘overnight care workers’ or whatever positions are considering the least powerful are all examples of that denial of leadership.

These experiences fueled efforts to start up programs explicitly designed and run by people with life experience in the sex trade. But each of these programs have had to figure out criteria for volunteers and staff from all backgrounds too. We need to define more clearly the expectations in understanding and actions that everyone should have to do this work.