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Wellbeing Model

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  • wellbeing
  • In Practice

this is all great in theory. How do I do it?

Take it one step at a time.

Shifting from a "rescue and restore" model to a wellbeing model can feel like a daunting task, especially when it's a major change for an organization and its programs, funders, and community. While this level of a shift in thinking requires a deeper level of engagement with impacted communities than this one website can offer, there are some basic steps that can start you in the right direction.


  1. Learn if there are existing sex worker safety organizations doing work in your service area. Understand that they may be rightfully wary of anti-trafficking organizations and carceral systems (including nonprofits with deep ties to carceral systems). Build relationships. Show interest in both learning about and supporting their work. Do they need meeting space? Emergency fund access for their communities? Learn what their needs are so that you can both support their work and avoid overstepping. You don't want to be the "big box store" that chases out the local group that already has meaningful relationships.
  2. Review and revise your existing materials, programming, and practices. Do you use language that removes the agency of people in the sex trades consensually (such as "prostituted" person to refer to all sex workers, or "exploitation" to refer to all sex work)? Do your programs create barriers to services for people in commercial sex to access support (such as requiring exit from sex work to access domestic violence services)? Do your practices create barriers or harm for local worker organizers? 
  3. Learn more about a wellbeing framework. Full Frame Initiative has extensive resources for policy, systems advocacy, and direct service programming. Start with the Wellbeing Bootcamp and then explore their other tools and resources.
  4. Educate your organization's staff on a wellbeing framework and engage them in collaboratively creating the vision for how your organization will use a wellbeing model. Educate your board, funders, and community. Ensure that you continue and integrate your wellbeing approach with your organization's diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice initiatives.
  5. Continue evaluating your efforts and partnerships to learn how to improve. Find out how you're doing by your program's participants/clients, your program's partners (including sex worker safety organizations), and your employees and volunteers.

Respect the deep history of worker organizing

Long before there was a Trafficking Victims Protection Act, there were sex workers organizing for safety, freeing each other from the control of exploiters, responding to workers experiencing domestic violence, and advocating for the safety, education, and empowerment of runaway and homeless youth without supportive families. Due to the politicization of sex work, these organizers' voices were largely excluded (and often intentionally maligned) throughout the creation of anti-trafficking law. 

Learn more

What can wellbeing support look like in practice?

Seattle, Washington, USA

US-based with global members

US-based with global members

Aileen’s is a peer-centered organizing and hospitality space located in Federal Way for women working along the Pac Hwy. This is the area south of Seattle stretching from around SEATAC airport to the south end of King County that is home to many women who trade sex and where Gary Ridgeway, a.k.a. Green River Killer, sought his victims.

US-based with global members

US-based with global members

US-based with global members

BIPOC Adult Industry Collective offers microgrant support, educational webinars, and mental health and support programming. They offer financial support for therapy as well as for BIPOC sex workers leaving domestic violence.

New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

US-based with global members

New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Women with a Vision aims to improve the lives of marginalized women, their families, and communities by addressing the social conditions that hinder their health and well-being  through advocacy, health education, supportive services, and community-based participatory research.

selected tools and resources

Wellbeing Planning Toolkit

Wellbeing Planning Toolkit

Wellbeing Planning Toolkit

In collaboration with Alliance for Hope International, FFI designed this resource primarily for programs that focus their work with people who have experienced domestic and sexual violence. It provides actionable information, exercises, and tools to help shift from a singular focus on short-term safety toward increasing survivor safety in the context of creating opportunities to support long-term wellbeing.

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PEARR Tool

Wellbeing Planning Toolkit

Wellbeing Planning Toolkit

The PEARR tool, created by CommonSpirit Health, HEAL Trafficking, and Pacific Survivor Center is an evidence-based framework for assessment for trafficking and other forms of interpersonal violence. It is based off the CUES model, or universal education approach, which is trauma-informed, patient-centered, and recognizes that creating an emotionally and physically safe context for disclosure is often more effective than a checklist screening tool.

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Wellbeing Blueprint

Why Decriminalizing Sex Work is More Than Just Decriminalizing Sex Work: A Manifesto

Why Decriminalizing Sex Work is More Than Just Decriminalizing Sex Work: A Manifesto

The Wellbeing Blueprint took shape in 2020 when a group of changemakers came together to turn a crisis into a turning point.

For generations, marginalized communities responding to injustice had been sidelined, under-resourced or ignored. Then COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd shook the nation to its core. A long-overdue reckoning began taking place as more people became aware of the inequities and atrocities that communities had been organizing around for decades.

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Why Decriminalizing Sex Work is More Than Just Decriminalizing Sex Work: A Manifesto

Why Decriminalizing Sex Work is More Than Just Decriminalizing Sex Work: A Manifesto

Why Decriminalizing Sex Work is More Than Just Decriminalizing Sex Work: A Manifesto

 The oft-repeated statement “sex work is work” does not imply that everything is fine with sex work as is. It means that sex work is a site of survival, of struggles and accomplishments, of exploitation and resistance, of degredation and dignity, like any other work. Decriminalizing sex work does not begin and end with decriminalizing sex work: rather, it is a framework that proposes a radical transformation of social, economic, and political structures to enable full lives and opportunities for all. 

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Copyright © 2023 Wellbeing Model - All Rights Reserved. 

The Wellbeing Model is an independent network of human trafficking survivors, grassroots organizers, and affiliated organizations working collectively to end human trafficking through fostering individual and community wellness. While we draw inspiration from the Full Frame Initiative’s Wellbeing Framework and recommend their resources, we are not affiliated with FFI and do not represent them in any way.

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