SW5 was an organisation working with men and transgender people who sell sex
1985 – Streetwise Youth I
It was originally established in 1985 by Richie McMullen and Father Bill Kirkpatrick. The aim was to provide support, advice and care to young men selling or exchanging sex. This was initially through provision of a Drop-In service in a flat of one of the founders. The service developed in Earl’s Court in London as there was a large visible group of young men selling sex in and around this area. The organisation moved to Eardley Crescent and started working in partnership with Barnados, who staffed a four person outreach team. This involved regular street sessions and referring contacts made on the streets back to the Drop-In service.
At the time, the name Streetwise Youth (SWY) appropriately reflected the client group the organisation worked with. The majority of young men and pre-op male to female transgender clients SWY came into contact with were selling sex on the streets, mainly around Earl’s Court and Piccadilly. Many were also street homeless. It worked with young people under 26 years old and it was considered very much a youth provision.
A lot of the young people SWY came into contact with were in very vulnerable situations and could be at risk of exploitation and abuse. Selling or exchanging sex was a means of survival for some and they had very little choice or were coerced into getting involved in prostitution. Most stated that they would not disclose that they sold or exchanged sex to their families, friends or other professionals through fear of being judged or stereotyped. They also expressed concerns and fears when disclosing information about their involvement in prostitution because of the fear of legal implications.
At SWY young people were offered a safe and secure environment where they could speak freely and openly about their involvement in prostitution without the fear of being judged or rejected. They were also offered advice, support and information around the issues involved in selling or exchanging sex and a variety of other issues.
You can find out more about the service and its clients during this period in the book Male Prostitution (1992) by Donald West and Buz De Villiers: it came from Streetwise Youth's work.
The partnership with Barnados continued until it was dissolved in 1993.
1994 – Streetwise Youth II
The closure of the organisation was a concern as it was seen as the loss of a unique and important service. A new Management Committee was formed and a report was produced by Kensington and Chelsea NHS Health Authority to recommend the ongoing provision of such a specialist service. The new Management Committee went on to develop the basis of the new service. There new staff were recruited and the organisation was re-launched to clients in December 1994. The Drop-In service was re-established and clients could come in and get free food and access shower and laundry facilities, medical services and get advice and information on a variety of issues.
The world of male and transgender sex work changed enormously in the late 1990s. With the advent of mobile phones and the internet, changes in the laws around the age of consent for men having sex with men, and a gay press willing to publish explicit ads, the sex industry developed rapidly. There was less sex being sold and exchanged on the streets in London and more through mobile phone contact via cafes, bars, adverts in the press and through the internet. The taboos around male and transgender prostitution reduced and there was a growing demand and support for the recognition of and rights of sex workers.
Fewer of SWY's clients also identified as street homeless. They choose instead to stay in a variety of other environments they considered safer, such as with punters or on floors and sofas at friends homes or staying up all night in saunas and clubs. Housing remained a major issue, but there was a move away from being street homeless to becoming the hidden homeless. Increasingly, new clients reported making the adult choice to enter the sex industry rather than simply having to as a means of survival, or having been coerced.
In 2001, the charity which owned the building in Eardley Crescent said it wanted to sell the building. It was willing to offer it at a discount to Streetwise Youth and, following a successful fund-raising appeal, SWY acquired the freehold in 2002 with the help of a mortgage. More funds were raised to refurbish the client areas and improve the service.
2003 – SW5
During the month-long period of building work in March 2003, Streetwise Youth under went a major review involving clients, staff and the Management Committee. As a result the service changed. The service was broadened out to try and work with a greater variety of male and transgender people involved more widely in sex work. The way the service was delivered was also altered.
There was an acknowledgement that were still individuals who may have had less choice or have been coerced into selling and exchanging sex, and that it was important to continue providing a service to meet their needs. However there was also a need to extend the service to male and transgender sex workers who had made more choices to become involved in selling or exchanging sex. Historically the organisation hadn’t so readily attracted these individuals and it was believed SWY could still offer them a service although they might have different needs to the traditional client group. There was also awareness of a large increase in the visibility of transient sex workers coming to London from countries all over the world, and a desire to ensure the services developed to include this group of sex workers and escorts.
In order to do all this, the age restriction was lifted and the decision was made to move away from the idea that the service was a youth provision. It was also decided to try and change the perceived image that SWY only worked with homeless people, selling or exchanging sex on the streets. The service expanded to include all male and transgender people who were or had been involved in all forms of sex work (or who were contemplating it), as apposed to just those who were involved in prostitution. It was also opened up to include all transgender sex workers and not just pre-op male to female ones.
So client services changed from the old style Drop-In into a more modern café setting. An environment was created where people could come to relax, socialise and chill out. There was a move away from the space being somewhere you could come to speak to a worker about your individual personal issues and instead clients were encouraged to to attend private one-to-one appointments to do this. A series of satellite workers from outside would offer a specific service to clients. A sexual health specialist came on a weekly basis, a nurse fortnightly, plus a counsellor, a masseur and a Reiki practitioner who each came in weekly.
To highlight all these changes, the name of the service changed to something more neutral and more encompassing. "Streetwise Youth" as a name still endorsed the idea that it only worked with youth who were on the streets. The name chosen was "SW5". This was thought to have a number of meanings that hopefully suited everyone: "SW"could still stand for Streetwise for those who identified with the old service, however it could also stand for Sex Worker and SW5 was the first part of the building's postcode.
These changes were hugely successful. SWY's client numbers had peaked to an all-time high in the summer of 2002, before failing away again to a low level. Within three months, every single month saw at least as many clients as the previous record. Although SW5 ads in the escort sections of the gay press plus outreach at the local male brothel and at the offices of one of the city's gay magazines brought in many new clients, news of the improved services quickly spread and most new clients were as a result of word of mouth within the sex work community. It was common for an existing client to bring along newcomers to show them what was available, and the number of new clients over any given period more than doubled.
2004 – Merger
Despite all these successes, the financial situation of the Streetwise Youth charity was perilous. Half of its funding came from the local NHS Primary Care Trust (PCT) as part of its HIV work (although the clients had no higher rate of HIV infection than the wider population of gay men in London, their number of partners meant that spending money on HIV prevention and care for them was highly cost effective) and half from charitable trusts impressed with its work with a disadvantaged and marginalised group. However little of this funding was secure and each financial year started with no guarantee that the service would survive to the end of it. The financial year 2003/2004 was particularly marginal and while the service's Director had managed to fund-raise for the entire amount needed by the end of the year, the cashflow situation was very tight throughout. (It was so bad that the designers of the SW5 logo were never paid for their work, hence their willingness to let us use it.)
Part of the problem was that SW5 proudly continued Streetwise Youth's policy of working from a client-led risk reduction perspective, offering clients immediate and longer term advice, information and support to enhance the choices available to them, rather than being an 'exiting' project, only interested in helping clients exiting prostitution or other sex work. If clients wanted to exit, SW5 would help them do so, but it was far more common for clients to want help in continuing their sex work safely. Had SW5 been an exiting project, the vast majority of clients would have never come near it. However the stigma around sex work means that it is far easier to get funding for an exiting project than a risk reduction one, as some funders do not like the idea that they are helping to support sex work in any way. The project's focus on male and trans workers also meant that homophobia and transphobia were issues as well.
So when the idea of merging with the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) was suggested, it seemed like the answer to some prayers. SW5 would have the benefit of their financial stability and have the opportunity to expand into other locations with a THT presence, and THT would acquire a valuable asset in the service's building, plus gain the service's experience in working with sex workers which would it expand from being an 'HIV charity' to a wider 'sexual health one'. What could go wrong?
In the short term, the merger meant the SW5 service survived the financial year 2004/2005. The local PCT, in common with many others, had overspent the previous year and reportedly decided to delay paying for the services it contracted until the end of the current year. The impact on SW5's cashflow would have been fatal, but by using THT's reserves, it survived and its services continued to break new usage records.
In the longer term, however, the merger meant the loss of nearly all the funding from charitable trusts. For some, now SW5 was part of THT, the charity's total income was too high for their funding criteria. Others decided that, because they already funded another aspect of THT's work, they would not fund THT twice. One honourable exception was the Elton John Aids Foundation who continued to fund both SW5 and THT's Crusaid hardship fund for people with HIV, but otherwise it was the SW5 funding that went. New income was very thin on the ground as the THT fund-raising team failed to match what a single person had done as a part of his job in terms of raising money for SW5 services. As the service's income fell, its costs rose. SW5 had always had very low overheads, now it had to pay more for its share of the overheads of the whole charity. The City's cliché that "there are no mergers, only takeovers" also proved accurate.
The result was a slow death of the service. First, the person responsible for the catering for the highly popular café service was made redundant. A reduced service was made possible thanks to the Fairshare charity's channelling of donations of prepared food from retailers. The highly experienced project team was then broken up and reduced in size. An issue with the electrical supply to the building meant several months in the less suitable environment of THT's national headquarters in King's Cross. Not long after the return to the building, and just after it became impossible to undo the merger, it was decided to "release the capital held in the building", i.e. sell it to make a profit. THT decided it should have only one website, tht.org.uk, so the SW5.info domain was disposed of (as you can see, it managed to avoid falling into the hands of those who wanted to use it for a porn site). A further loss of income occurred when the PCT decided to end its funding in the middle of the financial year.
What was left of the service moved back to the THT national headquarters, where it changed its name to SWISH and the SW5 name was erased: "Originally we were based in Eardley Crescent in Earl's Court (when were known as Streetwise Youth) now we're based in Kings Cross."