Public Input Invited on How to Help At-Risk Women in Wilmington

Brandywine Counseling & Community Services (BCCS), Stand Up for What’s Right and Just (SURJ), and the University of Delaware are conducting focus groups at local community locations to find out how the public thinks the community, the police, the courts, and the prison system can provide better services and solutions to women who may have gotten in trouble with the law, particularly prostitution. Public feedback will help to shape services that may be funded through a federal grant. Refreshments will be provided.

The next focus group will take place Thursday April 14, 2011, at 7 PM, at Claymore Senior Center, 504 S. Clayton Street, Wilmington.

To RSVP, please call Basha Silverman at (302) 655-9880 x123 or email bsilverman@brandywinecounseling.org.

Comments will be collected anonymously for a research project approved by UD's Board for the Protection of Human Subjects in Research. The event is co-sponsored by West Side Crime Group.

The focus groups are made possible by a grant from the U.S. Office of Women’s Health, which created the Delaware Prostitution Diversion Project, a groundbreaking coalition of criminal justice, social service and public health systems. The overall goal of the project is to improve the health and welfare of female sex workers, reduce their cycling rate in the court system, and thereby reduce women’s reliance on sex work as a means of income.