Improving the Self-concept of Women Commercial Sex Workers with Group Counseling Solution-focused Brief Counseling (SFBC) Approach

: This study underscores the critical need for mental health intervention among commercial sex workers undergoing rehabilitation, focusing on gender issues, particularly women choosing alternative paths in this field. The psychological challenges linked to their identity as female sex workers require the identification and enhancement of their self-concept. The research evaluates the effectiveness of the Solution-focused Brief Counseling (SFBC) approach in fortifying the self-concept of women involved in commercial sex work through group counseling services. Conducted at the Andam Dewi rehabilitation center in Solok with 21 female participants, the study adopts a quasi-experimental design. Results affirm the efficacy of SFBC, highlighting its potential to improve women’s self-concept in this specific context. This study contributes to an underexplored domain, urging counselors at rehabilitation centers to embrace group counseling services and SFBC to enhance the self-concept of women engaged in commercial sex work.


A. Introduction
Social problems often make a person do various ways to meet their economic needs. 1 Commercial sex workers (CSWs) are rarely investigated due to the often informal nature of the workplace, the negative stigma, and the often illegal nature of the activity. 2The behavioral characteristics of CSWs were low on sex role orientation and scored higher on sensation seeking. 3It indicates that prostitution as an alternative to choosing an easy way to make money in a short time indicates the low self-concept of prostitutes. 4The community, especially women who choose alternative paths to work as prostitutes, needs to be identified in the aspect of their self-concept. 5ommercial sex work has been rampant along with the times. 6Until now, prostitution in Indonesia continues to grow; in almost every big city, there is always a resocialization of prostitution. 7So far, the government has not been firm in dealing with the problem of prostitution. 8Sex workers are criminalized themselves as well as their clients. 9

__________
The prostitution law in Indonesia should be increasingly enforced so that cases of violations can be reduced.Criminal law only prohibits individuals who assist and provide sexual services illegally.Prostitution Law in Indonesia Article 63 paragraph 1 the penalties will be imposed on any person who provides facilities, induces, coerces, or orders to engage in prostitution.The punishment is in accordance with the laws and regulations in Indonesia. 10rostitution activities, both offline and online, are very troubling and disrupt the order of community life. 11In addition, it can also damage moral norms and violate any religious provisions.Additionally, those engaged in sex work are often discriminated against and viewed in a discriminatory way mainly because of the perception that these individuals are to blame for the breakdown of the traditional family, epidemics of STIs and HIV/AIDS, escalating crime, and the subversion of youth, 12 whoever takes advantage of the obscene act of a woman and makes it a livelihood is threatened with a maximum imprisonment of one year. 13ata available at the Indonesian Ministry of Social Affairs generally records the number of registered sex workers, i.e., individuals registered in lokalisasi (prostitution localization) spread across the territory of Indonesia.The National Coordinator of the Organisasi Perubahan Sosial Indonesia (OPSI)  revealed that the estimated number of women sex workers in Indonesia __________ reached around 230,000 people in 2019. 14Of course, these data deny the existence of unregistered sex workers who operate individually or in groups outside localizations, such as on the streets, hotels, salons, and so on.In addition, there is a general tendency that the number of sex workers reported by localization managers is often lower than it. 15everal other factors, such as family breakdown and abuse, low levels of education, lack of support, lack of awareness of the field, death of a breadwinner, and influence of friends, among other pertinent reasons, may contribute to the entry into sex work. 16Unfortunately, others are coerced and trafficked into the field.Entry into the field of sex work may be based on free occupational choice or based on poverty and powerlessness.Most (95%) of the respondents reported that they were in this occupation for financial reasons. 17o matter what the circumstances may be in which women in the field of sex work, it is important that we do not condemn or belittle the people in the field and focus on reducing and eliminating risk in the workplace. 18omen sex workers will be negatively labeled by society. 19Women are the spearheads who will continue the next generation. 20The role of a woman who will later become a mother who has been involved in the world of sex work will be underestimated because it is rooted in the minds of the community.Localizations are places where women sex workers live and work.However, despite this, women sex workers have an important role in cutting __________ the chain of deviant behavior.CSWs in several regions in Sumatera Barat are collected after being arrested by Municipal Police and recorded at the social service.Solok Regency, precisely in the Sukarami area, is in the social service center for women, Andam Dewi.This place is a place for coaching for prostitutes so that they no longer do work that should not be done as women with rehabilitation; of course, it will greatly help them improve their abilities so that they can have independent businesses to improve their economic situation and not return to the world of prostitution, by Through guidance on skills such as cosmetology, cooking and sewing, of course, prostitutes do not only need guidance on skills, but also mental and religious guidance, which will increase one's self-awareness and introduce them to their role as women.
Self-concept is rarely examined with the provision of guidance and counseling services because most rehabilitation institutions focus on finding skills for prostitutes that become their provision for life to make money.Community institutions only see the concept of health that needs attention.However, the psychological readiness of women prostitutes after facing the outside world after being declared out of the rehabilitation center still requires effort to prepare them.Therefore, this research raises the topic of self-concept so that women ex-prostitutes can get out of this behavior and be able to socialize in society.One of the important psychological factors discussed is selfconcept.
Self-concept affects the cognitive elements that can change the perspective of prostitutes and be able to get out of this job.Self-concept is an understanding of oneself that arises from interacting with others. 21Self-concept is a mirror image primarily determined by the roles and relationships with others and the reactions that others bring to one's self. 22Ideally, self-concept is a description of the appearance and personality desired by a person and is formed through experiences gained through interaction with the environment.Self-concept is not an innate factor that is brought from birth but develops from experiences that individuals continuously pass.The concept of self is important for an individual's life because the selfconcept determines how individuals act in various situations, which teaches individuals how to look at themselves as a whole, which includes abilities, feelings experienced by their physical condition and their immediate environment, self-concept creates feelings directed in the structure of personal consciousness. 23o it can be understood that the self-concept of CSWs has dynamics, especially at the turning point of rediscovering the positive meaning of themselves and their work after being slumped by their decision to become a CSW.The perception process has an important role in the search for meaning, namely how they interpret and make sense of their life experiences.The selfconcept of sex workers is a construction of identity before becoming a sex worker and the subjective self-meaning of being a sex worker.The thing that has a strong influence on her self-concept is the experience of going through a dilemmatic situation related to the moral conflict experienced and the ability to find meaning in the fact that she is a prostitute.A pseudo-self-concept colors the self-concept of sex workers because they like to lie to cover their disgrace by wearing masks, both in the form of social masks and moral masks. 24ased on research analyzed empirical evidence for the relationship between the occurrence of dissociation and acting as women sex workers (CSWs) on mental health conditions, there is yet little attention has been paid to the psychological factors that influence the behavior of women in sex work. 25any studies investigate sex workers, but there are very few studies that investigate the psychological conditions and trauma of sex workers regarding self-concept, 26 that a person's sexual self-concept serves to regulate sexual cognitions and behaviors. 27Solution-focused Brief Counseling (SFBC) is a powerful, practical, and proven approach to changing individuals in a positive direction. 28SFBC counseling focuses on the problem of the self-concept of group members.SFBC emphasizes the counselee's feelings in changing his behavior.Through group counseling with the SFBC approach, it is hoped that CSWs will be able to solve problems independently, not only regarding their way of thinking but also dealing with skills to improve self-concept. 29FBC is a postmodern approach that helps counselees discuss current problems (here and now) to achieve life goals in the future. 30One of the advantages of SFBC is a solution-focused question technique to determine goals and solutions to problems faced by group members. 31Questions that focus on objectives, exception questions, and scaling questions are competencies that group leaders must possess to explore and create solutions to problems ingroup members.Group leaders can also apply the principle of operant reinforcement in the group counseling process to achieve goals.
In the implementation of SFBC, counselees choose the goal of completion they expect from a little attention in providing a diagnosis of past conversations or exploration of problems.SFBC is built on the optimistic assumption that every human being is healthy and competent and can construct solutions that can optimally improve his quality of life.The SFBC approach in helping client problems has advantages, including 1) the client can focus more on what he will do in dealing with the problem, 2) Solutions are highly adapted to the client's conditions so that they can be more targeted, 3) this approach can be combined with other approaches such as narrative and behavioral approaches. 33Following this description, it can be seen that the implementation of counseling services with a Solution-focused Brief Counseling technique can be an effective effort to prevent sex workers from doing these prohibited acts so that they can be accepted in society and live an everyday life like society in general.
We searched databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, Embase, Global Health, Scopus, PsycINFO, Sociological abstracts, Web of Science, and POPLine for revealed studies of women commercial sex workers is 3.400.000articles.For revealed studies of counseling among women commercial sex workers are 397.000articles.The behavioral characteristics of CSWs were low on sex role orientation and scored higher on sensation seeking. 34It indicates that prostitution as an alternative to choosing an easy way to make money in a short time indicates the low self-concept of prostitutes. 35Several studies discuss sexual violence in sex workers, but there has been no research that examines how to help improve the self-concept of sex workers.
The use of counseling models that are relevant to the problems and symptoms of psychological disorders is needed to support the implementation of adequate counseling services.SFBC is one of the counseling models recommended for implementing counseling services. 36This counseling focuses __________ on solutions, rejecting conventional approaches that provide a broad assumption that the best way to solve problems, in the SFBC technique is more focused on the problem. 37FBC emphasizes the feelings of counseling in changing their behavior. 38Through group counseling with the SFBC approach, it is hoped that sex workers will have the ability to solve their problems independently not only regarding how to think, but also handle therapy to improve self-concept.
From 1.460.000research regarding commercial sex workers, there has not been any research discussing psychological condition, especially selfconcept, by using intervention SFBC to help recover the psychological condition of commercial sex workers.The novelty of this study is to assist self-concept of commercial sex workers by implementing intervention SFBC, since there has not been any previous research providing intervention counseling SFBC.Previous studies discuss more interventions about religious guidance and skill's practice to get a job.From the review of the literature exposure above, this study aims to examine the effectiveness of the SFBC approach to improve the self-concept of women commercial sex workers with group counseling services.

B. Method
This study uses quantitative methods with an experimental design.This study aims to determine whether SFBC can effectively improve the self-concept of women prostitutes.To achieve this goal, researchers used a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental research design.The sample of this study used purposive sampling, namely women prostitutes with low self-concept and were at the Andam Dewi rehabilitation center.This research instrument is used to measure the valid and reliable self-concept of women prostitutes.The instrument was developed based on aspects and indicators of Burn's (1979) self-concept. 39fter being modified, it was tested and obtained a reliability of 0.85 with a high category.This instrument was named the self-concept scale.The selection of material provided is based on the number of items scale in the statement in low categories.Based on the results of the need assessment, the make a point2 about your instrument topics needed by sex workers to improve self-concept through group counseling services are determined, namely: 1) Basic selfconcept status of individuals physically and psychologically, 2) Build social selfconcept to interact with family, others and society 3) Build self-concept to realize self-ability, 4) Build self-concept to obey the teachings of the religion adopted and 5) Build self-concept to realize hope in the future.Data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon test with the help of SPSS version 25.Wilcoxon test criteria can be said to be different if the sig value.>0,05.

C. Result
Based on the results of self-concept data for CSWs women, it was carried out to find the initial description of the condition of self-concept seen in the aspects of basic self-concept, social self-concept, and ideal self-concept. 40The following data are research data on the self-concept of CSWs as a whole, where the results of the study show that the overall self-concept of CSWs is in the low category.
The three aspects of self-concept include: 1) The basic self-concept is an individual's perception of his abilities, status, and role in the outside world.It is his concept of the person he thinks of as he really is; 2) This social self-concept is the real self that the individual believes is seen by others and evaluates it and evaluates it; 3) This ideal self-concept is the kinds of personality that the individual expects to be this kind of person and that kind of person. 41See Figure 1.
Based on studies of self-concept theory, researchers tested aspects of basic self-concept that examine self-interpretation of abilities owned about oneself and others.The basic self-concept indicators are: 1) status and role and 2) ability itself.
Based on the problems often experienced by CSW women related to the basic self-concept, namely not being able to judge themselves, think instantly, disappointed due to the low self-concept of CSW women, causing CSW women to take the road to become prostitutes, feel dissatisfied, hate themselves for doing something not in accordance with expectations and feel unhappy because there are needs from these sex workers that have not been met.Furthermore, this basic self-concept can be improved through the individual's ability to understand and express positive self-concepts accurately, using positive selfconcepts can facilitate CSW thinking in understanding self-concept.
The treatment was given in five meetings group counseling 5 sessions with a distance of each session for 3 days.The results of treatment with group counseling with the SFBC approach can be seen from the Table 1.
The result is describing that the basic self-concept of CSWs increases after being given treatment.Then the T-test value is 0c meaning that there are no sex workers who have the same value between the pretest and posttest.Furthermore, to see the significance value is described in the following Table 2.
The result that the Asymp value is obtained.Sig.(2-tailed) basic selfconcept of women sex workers large 0.002.The significance value of 0.002 is smaller than the significance value of 0.05 (0.002 < 0.05).This means that there __________ is a significant difference in the level of basic self-concept of pretest and posttest women sex workers.Solution Focused Brief Counseling is effective to improve the basic self-concept of sex workers.

D. Discussion
This study shows the self-concept of commercial sex workers who are in the low category.Some aspects studied basic self-concept, social self-concept and ideal self-concept are in the low category.Woman commercial sex workers get a lot of insults and cuss from the community, because the community considers them socially unacceptable, and their presence is also rejected by the family. 42CSW has a negative impact on the community and is socially rejected __________ 42 Cecilia Benoit et al., "Sex Work and Three Dimensions of Self-Esteem: Self-Worth, Authenticity and Self-Efficacy," Culture, Health & Sexuality 20, no. 1 (2018): 69-83, https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2017.1328075.by the community. 43CSW has the concept of themselves being bad people and harming many people including making the family name become polluted, so they are afraid to return to their families. 44CSW have a bad self-concept because they always get rejection from various walks of life and even families for their presence, because it is considered a disgrace by the community and family, so they feel excluded and worthless because no one considers their existence. 45he results of the study by Rossler are known that the interviewed female sex workers showed a high level of mental disorders. 46PSK has a very high psychological and infectious disease burden for that there needs to be a government policy in helping them from social discrimination. 4748Working as a prostitute is a shameful condition, so many women hide and entrust their work to many people and families.Women who offer themselves to male swingers are at risk of infection with an infectious disease in which they have unprotected sexual intercourse. 49Sex workers are also very worried about their health and fear of contracting HIV/AIDS.So, it is very important that they are given interventions to be able to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.The results of this study are supported by Wolfram, that prostitutes have a lower __________ self-concept than most people. 50Previous research by Turcotte with findings shows that women are well aware of the impact of sex work as a result they have a bad stigma and stuck with pimping behavior.With these conditions, it has an impact on negative self-concept so that prostitutes in interacting in society use social masks because their work violates rules and norms. 51CSW said We were never really happy from this job, but there was no option to earn money. 52n line with Nikmah's research, there are not many similarities in selfconcept in each individual, including prostitutes.Sometimes individuals have a poor self-concept because they are dissatisfied with their physical condition and have psychological deficiencies.While individuals who have a positive selfconcept there is no gap in attitude and physical condition.Individuals who have a poor self-concept due to dissatisfaction with their physical condition and make the situation and condition as a benchmark for the ideal situation. 53other finding from the Pratama study that examined CSW in Serang city found that the self-concept of a commercial sex worker was shaped by the community.Their self-concept is formed from the views of the community that gives a negative symbol on the image of prostitutes.The similarity in this study is to measure the self-concept of prostitutes from the stigma given by the community. 54Relevant research from Istiyanto which found there were 140 people involved in prostitution and measuring self-concept with interviews and structured observations, it was found that CSW women in the Baturaden tourist site of Banyumas Regency had a negative self-concept.The negative Stigma of society also does not make leaving her job as a prostitute. 55espite this, improvement of self-concept in CSW should be done so that the use of counseling models that are relevant to the problems and symptoms of psychological disorders is needed to support the implementation of effective counseling services.Efforts to improve self-concept are still relatively low, so intervention with SFBC counseling services is a solution that can be applied to prostitutes in Indonesia.Counseling approach postmodern SFBT is a new paradigm that effectively helps sexual problems in society. 56Researchers examined the group counseling services conducted in groups to function in enriching the Cognitive Realm so that it affects the affective and psychomotor realm as one of the efforts that can be done to improve self-concept.This group counseling service is effective if implemented with a SFBC approach.The selfconcept therefore influences cognitive elements that can change the perspective of the prostitute and be able to get out of this job and be able to live the day with a better life.Data test results using Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test with results that selfconcept of women sex workers large 0.002.The significance value of 0.002 is smaller than the significance value of 0.05 (0.002 < 0.05).This means that there is a significant difference in the level of basic self-concept of pretest and posttest women sex workers.Solution Focused Brief Counseling is effective to improve the basic self-concept of sex workers.
The counsellor believes the counsellor is competent and the counsellor's task aims to help the counsellor recognize their competence.The essence of this counseling involves the counselee in building hope and optimism by making positive expectations in making changes.Solution Focused Brief Counseling is a non-pathological approach that emphasizes competence over deficiency, and strength over weakness .
In addition, the solution-focused brief counseling approach makes CSWs more interested in finding out the problems they are experiencing, in order to be able to develop their skills.This SFBC approach requires CSWs to be more active compared to counselors who only function as facilitators, the group counseling service process uses a SFBC approach.In contrast to group counseling services, in practice counseling is centered on the inmates of the rehabilitation center.Therefore, it is hoped that in the future the counselor will explore the SFBC approach so that in the implementation of group counseling services only for topics related to efforts to improve self-concept, but it is also necessary to try to apply it to other materials according to the needs and problems that occur in prostitutes in rehabilitation homes.For a more effective implementation of group counseling services using the SFBC approach, the counselor must provide a stimulus to sex workers to be active in following each step of the SFBC approach.
Interventions provided with SFBC conducted on prostitutes who are in rehabilitation centers address the problems such as; (1) Basic self-concept status of individuals physically and psychologically, (2) Build social self-concept to interact with family, others and society (3) Build self-concept to realize selfability, (4) Build self-concept to obey the teachings of the religion adopted and (5) Build self-concept to realize hope in the future.
SFBT counseling intervention in this study can guide counselors or rehabilitation center employees to provide psychological assistance in recognizing and improving positive self-concept in prostitutes.The basis for the development of the concept of PSK itself is discussed in accordance with the experiences and negative thoughts that arise from the stigma of a bad society about their work.

E. Conclusion
Based on the research results obtained, it was concluded that in general the self-concept of women sex workers can effective be improved through group counseling services with a SFBC approach.Group counseling services with a SFBC approach provide an understanding of interpreting self-concept positively so that sex workers can leave prostitution and be accepted by society.Implementation of group counseling with a SFBC approach in this study can be used as a reference for counselors to overcome social problems, especially for ex-prostitutes to improve their self-concept positively.
29Gerald Corey, Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy (Belmont. 32rald B. Sklare, Brief Counseling That Works: A Solution-Focused Approach for School Counselors.Practical Skills for Counselors(Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press, Inc., 1997).

Table 1
Results of the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test Analysis of Differences in the Basic Self-Concept Levels of Woman CSWs at Pretest and Posttest

Table 2
Test of Significance of Self-Concept Improvement of Women Prostitutes