Evidence on Exit

An exploration of the context, motivation and support for an exit out of sex work in South Africa

This study and the recommendations that result from it will assist organisations and institutions who provide services to sex workers to respond to individuals who wish to exit out of sex work.

The document lays out our rationale for the study, its methodology and results and our recommendations in the form of a Model of intervention.

It is our hope that organisations providing services to sex workers will recognise that their current programmes may already have the potential to provide person-centred and demand driven support to sex workers who wish to transition out of sex work. Further, those institutions and organisations focusing on exit only as a strategy of support to people who sell sex, will find our Model useful as routed in the experiences of those people.

This document fills a significant gap in research, and intends to place the voices of people who sell sex centrally in the development of evidence based exit programmes.

A note on terminology: We use the term exit throughout this report since it is a commonly used term, but acknowledge it to be an imperfect description of a complex process that is not one-directional.

Produced by

SWEAT

January 1, 2017