LOCAL PROSTITUTES GETTING SUPPORT HOTLINE

Youth have the Kids Help Phone to turn to for support.

Now, local prostitutes will soon have their own hotline to call.

The support line, a project of the Prostitution Awareness and Action
Foundation of Edmonton, has already begun training seven former
prostitutes who will volunteer to staff the phones. The goal is to
make help available outside of the agency's business hours to
prostitutes needing support, said Dawn Hodgins, PAAFE's special
projects co-ordinator.

The plan so far is to have the peer counsellors work from their
homes, where they'll have a phone set up to receive calls from the
hotline number. The goal is to have the system running some time
next year, Hodgins said.

Hodgins made the comments during a session at the Issues of
Substance event on drug and alcohol abuse at the Shaw Conference
Centre today. Participants in the session also heard from police
Insp. Brian Nowlan, who described how the sex trade in Edmonton is
largely fuelled by drugs.

"We found out in short that the problem we have in Edmonton is not
prostitution. It's simply drug addiction," Nowlan said at the session.

While prostitution has been a growing issue in the city, Nowlan said
police in recent years have started working not only to enforce the
laws against the sex trade, but also to find help for people on the streets.

Under the Snug program, for example, police make sure support
agencies are available to help prostitutes whenever they do a sting.

As a result, the arrested prostitutes can be immediately referred to
a drug-treatment program or get help finding housing as an
alternative to working the streets.

So far, police find about half the prostitutes they encounter want
the help. Nowlan added that of those who go into the program,
roughly half have left the sex trade.