3 Community-led Services
Figure 3.1 Types of community-led services
Community-led( sex worker-led) outreach Section 3.2
A trained sex worker( community outreach worker) ensures that the prevention and care needs of a defined group of individual sex workers are met.
Safe space( drop-in centre) Section 3.3
A place where sex workers may relax, socialize, and also hold meetings and other activities that strengthen them as a group.
Community committees and advisory groups Section 3.4
To help improve the quality of services by providing a channel for community feedback to the programme.
3.2 Community-led outreach
Community-led( sex worker-led) outreach
• Main personal interface between the programme( community outreach workers) and the majority of the community
• Promotion of services and referrals linking the community to condom supplies, voluntary HIV testing and counselling and care, diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, antiretrovial therapy, care and other services
• An entry point to strengthen community leadership
• An entry point to strengthen community-led crisis response and other structural interventions
Community-led outreach is an essential link between the community and the HIV prevention, care and treatment offered by a programme. It empowers sex workers to draw on their first-hand knowledge of vulnerability and risk to problem-solve with members of their community, strengthening access to services and making HIV prevention, care and treatment viable. Community outreach workers 3 build rapport with other sex workers, understand their needs as individuals, and on a regular basis provide them with( or link them to) appropriate high-quality services. By monitoring the relative vulnerability and risk of each individual sex worker, community outreach workers also supply the first level of data collection for the programme.
3 In this tool,“ community outreach worker” is used to mean a sex worker who conducts outreach to other sex workers, and who is not generally full-time staff of an HIV prevention intervention( full-time staff might be called“ staff outreach workers” or also simply“ outreach workers”). Community outreach workers may also be known by other terms, including“ peer educators”,“ peer outreach workers” or simply“ outreach workers”.
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