“For me ‘Ask for Angela’ was really important. It gives women who need an escape route a way out of the situation they’re in, and it gave us as a security team to get women out of a situation. 
 
I first learned of Ask for Angela when another Door Supervisor shared a post about it and so I did some research. 
 
For me as a Door Supervisor identifying vulnerable people is one the most important parts of the job, so I decided to tell the venue manager about Ask for Angela and tell them that “this is what we’re going to do” so we decided that we would advertise it on the venue social media pages and we’d printed cards that we gave to drivers of local taxis. 
 
The bar staff weren’t sure about the plan or whether it would work so we did some practical training on the plan. A few weeks later the first young woman went to the bar and asked if Angela was working. 
 
Then I decided that we could use Ask for Angela in a more proactive way and if I saw someone who was vulnerable or wasn’t enjoying the attention she was getting I’d approach and tell her “Angela behind the bar wants to see you” (or similar), when they got to the bar they asked by a female member of staff if they were ok or if they needed to get away. After it had worked I briefed the rest the team on how to do it. 
 
It worked because I was lucky to be working with a really good security team who all cared and would really look out for vulnerable people, but we also had a good bar team who worked with us to keep people safe. We made a plan, we trained both the security and bar teams, and partnered with local taxis to make sure we could get people to a place of safety, we rehearsed the plan, and we made it work.”