History of BLAST
In 2001 Yorkshire MESMAC was asked to sit on Bradford’s Prostitution Forum to champion issues for men. From the beginning of its membership, it became evident that there was no specialist service working with young men and boys involved in, exploited through or at risk of sexual exploitation through prostitution in the Bradford district or its neighbouring cities. Even though Yorkshire MESMAC had experience of working with this client group in the past there was currently no specialist worker in place.
Bradford Community Safety released £10,000 to Yorkshire MESMAC to carry out a piece of local research to explore the issue further. From this Yorkshire MESMAC commissioned York St Johns College to carry out the research. On the production and publication of the research, funding was sort to employ a specialist worker to develop a project to support this client group. In September 2003 Connexions West Yorkshire released funding for one year from its development fund and the BLAST! Project became operational.
The last year has been an exciting year for the project seeing the successful appointment of a
BLAST! is part of the Yorkshire MESMAC group of services.