Counselling as a Tool for Healing the Wounded Soul of Devadasi Sex Worker: Development of Counselling Training Programme

Abstract

The subject of sex work evokes strong and immediate emotional reactions from public, primarily because of the low respect attached, stigma, sexuality, human-rights issue and sex trade. Global literature on female sex workers suggests that many female sex workers do develop intimate relationship with one of their customers, and they lose power of negotiation and often become victims of the violence from their intimate partners. The present study aimed at identifying the needs and issues of female sex worker in the context of their relationship with their intimate partners and to assess the training needs of the counsellors and also to capture the learnings into a training manual. The training programmes were developed in four phases. The counsellors earlier had undergone training on basic counselling skills. They were able to carry out counselling sessions in the field regarding HIV, condom use, health, facilities and schemes available for them and so on. However, they expressed limitations in handling other issues of Devadasi sex workers in the context of relationship with their intimate partners. A number of 12 counsellors and outreach workers participated in the focus group discussion. Training programmes for each module was conducted for the counsellors working with female sex workers. After each training programme, counsellors were asked to be implemented in the field. Filed testing of the module was done during field visits and hand-holding support was provided to the counsellors to enhance their skills.