School age prostitution: an issue for children's nurses?

Creating supportive environments for street working children requires children's nurses to be knowledgeable. Strengthening community action requires awareness of existing groups who currently work with child prostitutes. Nurses need to develop counselling skills to enable child prostitutes to make healthy choices. Building healthy public policies challenges nurses to mediate with politicians regarding policies which may adversely affect children. A health service, re-oriented to improve the care of school age prostitutes, necessitates collaboration with health, community and charity workers.