Hi

My name is April and I am one of the Senior Nurses at The Centre NHS Clinic for sexual health and contraception. We have clinics based in Exeter, Exmouth, Tiverton, Okehampton, Barnstaple and Ilfracombe.

We offer confidential, free testing, assessment and treatment for all STIs, Hepatitis B vaccinations, Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) medication (for if you think you may have been exposed to HIV within 72 hours), reminder texts for follow-up or regular appointments, all methods of contraception, including emergency contraception (morning-after-pill or IUD), plus pregnancy testing and onward referrals for unplanned or unwanted pregnancies. Our service offers both booked appointments and a daily walk-in session in our Exeter clinic Monday to Friday 9.30-3.30.

At the moment, we do not advertise specialist services aimed at sex workers as we are not sure whether this is something that would be helpful in our local community - Exeter is a pretty small place and we wonder whether having a specialist clinic could be off-putting, as it may 'out' workers to others in the area? Also we are unsure whether there would be enough demand for a specialist clinic in our area? However, I also wonder whether having a place to meet with other workers can actually be a supportive and helpful experience? I would really appreciate your opinions about these things.

We do see patients who tell us about their work (and we ask everyone who attends whether they are currently, or have ever worked in the sex industry) and we hope to be very proactive when people disclose this to us, to ensure they receive really high quality care, tailored to their needs. However, we know there are probably people who don't want to give us this information.

The reason for my post today is that we are currently evaluating the services we offer and would really appreciate your help and advice, especially if you are local to us. We currently have a survey on our website, which I would really appreciate your feedback on: www.thecentresexualhealth.org (There is the option to enter a prize draw on completing the survey to win a FitBit activity tracker worth ?90).

If you have used the clinics in Exeter or surrounding areas, please could I ask you to provide your unbiased opinion about your experiences? You can PM me if you prefer not to post publicly on here. If you are local to Exeter and want a discreet appointment, please ask to book with April when you contact the clinic - I work in most of our clinics in the East on a rotational basis throughout the month, but mainly Exeter most days!

Our website has details of all of our clinics or you can email me in confidence on april.brooks@nhs.net

Thank you very much! Take care - April

Hi Kay

Thank you so much for your reply, I really appreciate your advice. As I said in previous message, we are always evaluating the service we offer in clinic and I am in the process of updating the information on our website, so perhaps I will look into creating a specific section on the website, so people are aware what additional tests will be offered if they feel able to disclose that they are working in the industry. To anyone who is open with this info, we routinely offer throat and rectal swabs, vaccinations, reminder texts for regular testing etc; which is not always the case for all patients, so it is important that we know. 

I will try and get some more information out there to raise awareness about this, so people get the service they need when they attend.

If people can continue to log on to our website to give us feedback via the pop up survey, that would be amazing:  www.thecentresexualhealth.org

Thank you!  April

In response to the website survey we carried out last year, we now have an updated section on our website specifically aimed at sex workers, providing information about what we can offer and with some useful links to other helpful sites (including saafe!) 

www.thecentresexualhealth.org/services/sex-workers

I hope this section of the wesbite is useful and reassuring to people who are thinking of visiting one of our clinics. Any comments or feedback would be welcome; or if there are any other useful links to organisations (especially South West based), I would really appreciate hearing from you. Feel free to PM me if you like.

Thanks!