Blue Door program for sex trade survivors ends as funding dries up

Newfoundland and Labrador's only program designed to help people exit the sex trade comes to an endthis week, five years after it began.

The Blue Door program, run by St. John's non-profit organization Thrive, offered counselling and other services to people being sexually exploited.

It operated on a five-year grant from the federal government, and required provincial funding to continue.

That funding never came, says executive director Angela Crockwell.

"All Ican be left to assume is that it wasn't a priority," she said Monday, the program's last day in operation.

"It's a very sad day for everybody at Thrive. We built a gap service for vulnerable people, and we weren't able to sustain that."

Crockwell previously told CBC News that she had spent the better part of a year waiting on government to respond to her funding proposal.

She was asking for just over $400,000 to pay for five full-time staff members, an office space and an emergency supply of cash for Blue Door clients.

About 80 people, largely young women and girls, have used the program since its inception, gaining access to therapy, apartments, education and jobs. One woman, Crockwell said, just bought her first house.

Despite what the director describes asresounding community support, the program can't continue without cash. Crockwell says three of the five staff members will be let go Tuesday. The remaining two will be kept on for another month, and have their contracts extended for a year if Thrive's backupfunding proposal is accepted, Crockwell said.

• Wounded & lucky: Here's what happens when cops, media & the sex trade collide

For now, they're winding down as ethically as possible, she said, cobbling together other community resources for their clients, who will no longer have access to a dedicated service solely designedfor victims of sex trafficking or exploitation.

"That doesn't exist for people. That one-stop shop that's what we're losing," Crockwellsaid.

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador