Bristol sex worker charity to cut back on services
One25 says it will be stopping two of its support schemes by the end of the month
A Bristol based charity, which supports women involved in sex work, says two of its services are stopping because of "significant financial challenges".
One25 works with women who they say are often deeply traumatised from childhood abuse, marginalised by society and end up working on the streets.
The charity says its drop-in service offering emotional support and a scheme called Peony, which helps teach women skills to reintegrate into wider society, will both stop by the end of May.
The charity's outreach and casework services will continue.
"We know how vital our support is for the women that we exist for," a statement from One25 reads.
"Reducing One25’s services will impact the women and we are extremely sad about this.
"The services that we will continue to deliver will provide support to the largest number of women possible within our current resources.
"We expect this to be around 200 women next year compared with 234 last year."
Explaining the decision the charity says it must "substantially" reduce its costs in order to survive.
"We have been working hard to grow our income, but this has been extremely challenging in the current climate," their statement reads.
"We returned to our vision and mission and recognised we need to focus on reaching the most marginalised women and supporting them to be safe.
"We looked at the needs of the women using our services, and the impact of each of the services we deliver.
"We also considered where there may be some elements of duplication of our work through partners too.
"This showed us that the outreach service for women who are street sex-working in Bristol is the most critical of all One25’s services.
"We also then saw that the casework service was essential to both continue operating the van and to ensure that these women could get the further support that they need.
"We assessed what back-office support was needed to enable these two services to run, and when we costed this up, we could see that this was all we could afford to continue at this time."
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle paid a visit to the charity in 2019.