our services

Our direct street outreach is the heart of our work and the place where our mission is lived most clearly. We meet women exactly where they are, on the tracks, in encampments, in hotels, on the stroll, and in all the places where survival, exploitation, trauma, and substance use intersect. This work is grounded in trust, presence, and respect. It is not about fixing people. It is about showing up consistently, without judgment, and offering safety, resources, and connection in moments when the world has turned its back.

Street outreach allows us to bridge gaps that traditional systems create. Many women surviving prostitution or extreme poverty are unable to access shelter, healthcare, or treatment due to criminalization, punitive rules, stigma, and past trauma with providers. By going directly to them, we remove those barriers. We bring harm reduction supplies, food, clothing, hygiene items, overdose prevention tools, and immediate crisis support. We help women navigate urgent needs such as replacing IDs, securing medical care, accessing detox or treatment when they choose, and finding safe shelter.

Our outreach is survivor-led, which means women are met by people who understand the realities of survival on the streets. The tone, the approach, and the expectations are shaped by lived experience. Outreach is a conversation, not a command. It is empowerment, not enforcement. It is care that honors autonomy while offering pathways forward that are driven by the individual, not the system.

Our advocacy extends this work beyond the streets and into the rooms where decisions are made. We advocate fiercely for policies and practices that treat survivors of prostitution and trafficking with dignity, not punishment. We push for harm reduction models in shelters, law enforcement diversion instead of arrest, survivor-centered housing solutions, and increased funding for trauma-responsive services. Our advocacy is grounded in the stories and needs of the women we meet every day, ensuring that their voices shape the systems that impact them.

We work with city officials, service providers, hospitals, courts, and legislators to shift the narrative from asking why a woman does not just leave to asking what she needs to be safe, supported, and believed. Our presence in these spaces is intentional, a reminder that systems must be accountable to the people they claim to serve. Survivor leadership guides every part of this work, including the policies we push, the reforms we demand, and the cultural change we insist on.

Direct street outreach and advocacy are intertwined. What we witness on the streets becomes the fuel for systemic change. What changes in policy become the support women feel in their daily lives. And through it all, we remain committed to the same core values: autonomy, dignity, compassion, and the belief that every woman deserves safety and a real chance to heal.

At Her Way Home, our goal is to open a new harm reduction shelter that is intentionally designed around the needs and realities of prostituted women.

This shelter will provide safety without conditions, support without judgment, and pathways forward that are survivor-defined rather than system-imposed. Women impacted by commercial sexual exploitation face unique barriers and often cannot access traditional shelters due to sobriety requirements, punitive rules, criminalization, trauma responses, and stigma. Our goal is to create a space where those barriers do not exist.

This new shelter will center autonomy, dignity, cultural humility, and relationship-based care. Women will be met by survivor leaders and staff who understand the complexities of exploitation, trauma, substance use, and homelessness. We aim to provide true safety, immediate stabilization, and access to individualized supports ranging from housing navigation to harm reduction, healthcare connections, peer support, and trauma-responsive services.

Her Way Home is committed to building a model that fills the gap in current systems, expands access to compassionate care, and ensures that prostituted women have a place that truly meets their needs. This shelter is not simply a program. It is a promise that every woman deserves a safe place to rest, heal, and begin rebuilding her life on her own terms.

Her Way Home works to transform the systems that shape women’s lives by centering survivor leadership in education, policy, and practice. We partner with organizations, municipalities, service providers, and community leaders to challenge harmful narratives and replace punitive, compliance-based models with approaches rooted in harm reduction, trauma responsiveness, and dignity.

Our education efforts elevate survivor wisdom to deepen understanding of commercial sexual exploitation, homelessness, trauma, and co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. Through training, consultation, and public dialogue, we help institutions recognize how policies and practices can unintentionally cause harm, and how they can be redesigned to support safety, autonomy, and healing.

Systems change at Her Way Home is grounded in lived experience. We advocate for policies that reduce criminalization, expand access to low-barrier services, and hold systems accountable to the people they serve. By bringing survivor voices into decision-making spaces, we work to create lasting change that moves beyond awareness and results in real, measurable shifts in how women are treated and supported.

Her Way Home’s Peer Mentoring Program connects women with trained mentors who have lived experience of exploitation and understand what it takes to survive, heal, and rebuild. Peer mentoring is not case management. It is relationship-based support grounded in dignity, choice, and real-world understanding.

Peer mentors offer consistent, nonjudgmental support and walk alongside participants as they define their own goals, safety, and next steps. Mentors provide practical help navigating systems, attending appointments, and connecting to resources, while also modeling healthy boundaries, coping strategies, and harm reduction without pressure or shame. The focus is on reducing isolation, building trust, and creating genuine connections.

Participants are matched with a peer mentor based on shared needs, preferences, and readiness. Support is flexible and may take place in the community, by phone, or in other safe, agreed upon spaces. Because healing is not linear, support does not disappear when someone struggles.

For many women, systems have felt unsafe or punishing. Peer mentoring offers something different: a trusted relationship with someone who believes her, shows up consistently, and supports her without trying to control her path.