Laura - our Netreach Worker based in Wolverhampton - shared what a day in the life of her role looks like.
Hi I’m Laura and I’m the West Midlands Netreach Worker for the VAWG National Netreach Project. I joined Changing Lives in June 2022 as part of the amazing IRIS team, jumping straight into the brand new Netreach role. As Netreach was a new concept to Changing Lives at the time, with only one other Netreach worker in position in the North East, it allowed me to make the role my own & develop the role to suit the needs of the local area. Over the last few years, I have helped to progress the project and have watched the Netreach team grow and flourish to become what it is today. I am super proud to be a part of this amazing team and can’t wait to see what the future holds for Netreach!
Before joining Changing Lives, I had a variety of roles within the Finance, Travel, Transport and Retail industries. During the Covid lockdown I trained to become a Crisis Volunteer for the mental health charity ‘SHOUT’ and attended college to start training to become a qualified counsellor (something I hope to get back to one day!). It was around this time I saw the Trauma Lead position advertised with IRIS - I applied for this job as Changing Lives sounded like the perfect next step for my career - spoiler alert, I didn’t get that job!
Instead I got a call inviting me to an interview for a different brand new role that I was far more suited to - and the rest is history.
My role is extremely varied and no two days are ever the same. One day I could be at an event promoting the project, chatting away to locals and partner agencies, the next I could be creating intel reports for the police and attending exploitation meetings or scrolling through Adult service websites and forums to monitor current trends and concerns.
I love working for Changing Lives and as a busy mom of 2 young kids (9 and 6) I really appreciate the flexibility the role allows me to have. In my spare time I love nothing more than putting on my hiking boots and heading up a mountain. I am also rather embarrassingly a huge Eurovision fan and musical theatre nerd.
Spend a day with me...
6:30AM
- Coffee time! I am at my most productive first thing in the morning, so I like to start my work day early.
- Check and reply to Emails & Messages
- Email the intel analyst team at WMROCU to schedule next months online exploitation meeting
- Received a text from someone I had previously supported and signposted to The Revenge Porn Helpline. She was asking for support with Adult Service Website profile safety - replied and scheduled a call for the following day.
8:15AM
Time for the school run!
8.45AM - 9.30AM
- Log on to Escorting Hub (an online forum used as a support network for online sex workers)
- Check to see what is being discussed and flag any potential safeguarding concerns or any trends that may need to be monitored.
9.30AM-10.30AM
- Weekly Netreach meeting!
- Catch up with our lovely Netreach team - our team is spread across all sex work projects across our organisation, so it is nice to be able to have regular check ins and share any updates etc.
10:30-12:30PM
- Presentation time!
- Head over to a local youth housing team where myself and Elishya (West Mids Online Harms & tech abuse caseworker) presented some training around online exploitation, online harms and tech abuse. This was really productive and resulted in us setting up a plan for future drop in sessions and a referral pathway.
12:30PM - 1PM
- Lunch time!
- Enjoyed a lunch time walk listening to my favourite music to break the day up and reset my mind ready for a busy afternoon.
1PM-3:15PM
- Scanned through Adult Service Websites for any adverts that were showing red flags for potential sexual exploitation.
- Utilised Traffic Jam (a tool kit used by Netreach and police to assist in suspected exploitation and trafficking cases) to start to compile an intel report to submit to West Mids Police and ROCU
3:15PM
School run!
3:45PM-5.30PM
- Continue compiling intel report.
- Submitted intel to police and WMROCU, completed a DATIX and logged all the details on our Netreach data collection spreadsheet.
- Received a call from Walsall police Exploitation DLO requesting my support with an ongoing investigation. Arranged for her to send over the relevant information for me to work on tomorrow
5:30PM
Logging off time!
I work from home around 80% of the time and split my full time hours over 4 long days, so I find it really important to have strict work/home life boundaries in place - when I log off, I stay logged off and my phone and laptop get stored away out of sight until the next morning.
Time to spend some quality time with my family!
