Project Respect Values
We apply these values in the ‘way we work’ with service users, staff, volunteers, students, LEAG, Committee, collaborative partners, sector, and community.
Service Users at the Heart
Our service users are at the centre of everything we do. Our commitment is to voice, choice, empowerment and collaboration.
We aim to ensure our service supports the empowerment of people, acknowledging service users as the expert in their own lives. Understanding of individual intersectionality is a specific goal, with tailored and evidence informed services and transparent communication.
Listening to the voices of service users, community, workforce and volunteers is prioritised, with meaningful consultation and reflection, in consideration of culture and language.
Support Safety
Safety in all respects is a specific aim. Practice focuses on supporting physical, psychological and cultural safety for all service users. Safety, access and inclusion are prioritised for all experiences of the sex industry or of exploitation, and in consideration of individual experiences of service users including those who identify as LGBTIQA+, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, diverse migrant cultures, and as living with disability. Confidentiality is expressly included as a safety consideration.
Safety includes that of our workforce, to feel able to consult with leaders and colleagues across the organisation. Lived experience is valued and supported. Attention is paid to skilling through training and experience, mentoring and wellbeing initiatives. Support for practitioners includes anticipation, recognition and support for the impacts of vicarious trauma, and in consideration of diverse lived experience.
Welcome Diversity
Diversity is celebrated, with emphasis on authentically tailored person-centred service. Services are provided without bias or discrimination. Reflection is designed to challenge internal bias or assumptions, and is prioritised.
Representation across a variety of life experience and stages amongst those providing services, support and leadership deepens and broadens our ability to provide service to community and individuals.
Across community and within advocacy, diverse viewpoints are listened to with curiosity and respect. Human rights are centred, with an understanding that best outcomes occur through the sharing of power, rather than the exerting of it. The need for diverse experiences to coexist respectfully is understood, valued and supported. Effort is invested in elevating quieter voices.
Embrace Collaboration
Collaboration is central to relationships with service users, organisational partners and the wider community. Relationships are transparent, genuine and respectfully honest.
Strength based practice is central to service user support. Service users are supported to achieve their goals, and continue on empowered pathways beyond the support received from Project Respect. Best practice is extended through care teams and warm referrals.
Opportunities are widely sought to share with others our and their expertise, learn together and develop across sectors and beyond, with a spirit of increased understanding and without hostility. Perspective and contribution is valued and includes service users, LEAG, practitioners, leaders, non-services staff, volunteers, students, donors, wider peer lived experience and survivor voices, community members, and sector practitioners.
Be Adaptive – and Courageous
A spirit of continuous improvement and learning through strong service user partnership is fostered. Feedback, including complaints, is respected, encouraged, and acted upon. Feedback is actively sought, given and actioned across all relationships – inclusive of service users, practitioners, and leadership. Feedback is given in a way that is respectful and cognisant of potential impacts on the person receiving the feedback.
Advocacy is informed by service user and community experience, and research. The value of being flexible and adaptive is understood, and includes the ability to reflect and adjust direction and priorities in light of environmental changes, evolving evidence, and a deepened understanding of impact.
Listening is valued, and the alignment of our actions with our values is continuously reflected upon. The need for both adaptation and courage are acknowledged and supported, in the context of amplifying the voices of the lived experience of our service users, to bring about positive and impactful change.