Projects

The Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, a non-profit organization located in Cleveland, Ohio, works diligently to enhance the response of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Juvenile Division to youth who are victims of human trafficking or at risk for human trafficking. To enhance their response to human trafficking, the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center has implemented evidence-based screening and assessment protocols, expanded the court’s existing intervention model to include direct services, employed a multi-disciplinary, trauma-informed care approach, and increased education efforts to promote awareness and identification of human trafficking via outreach. Special consideration is given to youth who are involved with or diverted from the Safe Harbor Docket at Juvenile Court, which was created to enable juvenile victims of human trafficking to access treatment rather than face punishment. The Juvenile Court works with youth who are under the age of 18 at the time of complaint, mostly serving youth ages 14 to 17. The majority of youth served are from Cuyahoga County, and specifically addresses the overrepresentation of black youth and youth from families living below poverty level.  

Justice Innovations, Inc. - Queens Community Justice Center: Enhancing Juvenile and Family Court Responses to Human Trafficking (New York, NY)

The Queens HOPE (Heal, Overcome, Prosper, Empower) program is a trauma-informed, survivor-centered program for young people, ages 12-18, who are at-risk of or are victims of trafficking. The program, operated by the Center’s Queens Community Justice Center, is located in Jamaica, Queens, in New York. The goals of this program are to provide direct, specialized services and diversion programs for Queens youth who are victims of sex and/or labor trafficking or are at risk for human trafficking due to past or current victimization. It aims to support trafficked youth by meeting their treatment needs, prevent re-traumatization and further justice system involvement, and educate stakeholders to increase awareness and identification of sex and/or labor trafficking involving youth. The Queens HOPE program’s wide range of services include providing screening, assessment, clinical and case management services, evidence-based programs and practices, and the development of a Queens-specific multidisciplinary task force comprised of court- and community-based service providers and trafficking survivor consultants to inform the work. Queens HOPES ensure the program’s sensitivity to LGBTQIA+ youth and youth of all genders and facilitate relationship-building to ensure coordination of services, increase knowledge of the commercial human trafficking industry to understand the risks, dynamics, and short- and long-term implications on health, safety, mental health, and social stability. The Center is a national leader in the development, study, and dissemination of community-based and problem-solving justice system initiatives, built on the Center’s system change expertise and long history of advancing juvenile justice reforms as well as work providing support to survivors of human trafficking. 

To ensure the safety and support for children experiencing or at risk of human trafficking, the King County Superior Court initiated the King County Commercially Sexually Exploited Children (CSEC) Program. The CSEC program collaborates with Washington State’s child welfare agency to reduce the risk of child welfare youth becoming involved in human trafficking by expanding a well-established juvenile justice and child welfare multi-system approach. Through this enhancement, the King County CSEC Program works to improve efforts to identify trafficked youth by implementing strategies that target early identification, prevention and intervention, and retrieval of children and youth experiencing human trafficking. Efforts include:  

• Expanding the CSEC training catalog 
• Expanding the CSEC training catalog
• Expanding the Juvenile Court CSEC program by integrating with King County Superior Court Family Court Becca Programs (Truancy, At-Risk-Youth, Children in Need of Services) 
• Implementing the Commercial Sexual Exploitation Identification Tool 
• Increase referrals to services 
• Collaborating with the Children Justice center MDT to track identified youth 
• New training curricula 
• Combine efforts of Juvenile Court Program and Juvenile and Family Court Program 
• CSEC Screener – training and utilization of screener 
• Referrals to specific MDT and CSEC qualified community-based services 

About Us – Support Center for Child Advocates (sccalaw.org) 

Philadelphia Juvenile Anti-Trafficking Coalition – Support Center for Child Advocates (sccalaw.org) 

Human Trafficking Information & Resources – Support Center for Child Advocates (sccalaw.org) 

Project PROTECT (Philadelphia Response & Outreach to End Child Trafficking) supports the continued advancement of Philadelphia’s juvenile human trafficking court, Working to Restore Adolescent Power (WRAP Court), and related programs serving child victims of human trafficking. In collaboration with the Family Court of Philadelphia, Department of Human Services, District Attorney’s Office and numerous public and private agencies, Project PROTECT addresses court processes and legal representation, interdisciplinary trauma-informed service planning and court engagement, infrastructure-building, data collection and analysis, cross-systems coordination, training, and community awareness. The Philadelphia Juvenile Anti-Trafficking Coalition is the first of its kind— focusing on and addressing the needs of child victims of human trafficking and vulnerable subpopulations that are overrepresented and underserved. Participating agencies of the Coalition discuss actionable steps towards improving city-wide efforts to ensure that youth can access the multitude of services across systems throughout the Greater Philadelphia region. 

• Sacramento County Behavioral Health Services is collaborating with Capital Stars Behavioral Health Group to address criminalization of victims of sex trafficking through outreach and engagement services and training. The project aims to build collaboration between agencies and thus ensure creative interventions that reduce the harm experienced by victims of trafficking. The Community Support Engagement Team was designed by and for survivors of trafficking and support youth with the life skills to transition away from sexual exploitation.  

• This partnership between the Douglas County Juvenile Justice Initiative, Project Harmony, Education Rights Counsel, and Boys Town aims to provide cross-system support to youth that addresses the multi-faceted needs of the youth without criminalizing the youth. 

Boys Town 

• Boys Town will provide a short-term housing option for youth in need of stabilization. Boys Town’s program expertise is steeped in 105 years of child-caring history. Boys Town’s programs and services have been shown to improve mental health outcomes, family reunification, and integrated support systems. 
• Education Rights Counsel (ERC) will provide legal representation and advocacy to youth who are identified as potential victims of trafficking. ERC is a non-profit entity providing legal representation to advocate for the educational rights of youth and families. 
• Project Harmony will coordinate the Multi-Disciplinary Team meetings and the cross-system training and collaboration. Project Harmony is nationally recognized for their collaborative, child-focused approach to ensuring children are not further victimized by the systems intended to protect them.  

• Gracehaven partners with multiple community organizations, state and local governments, judicial systems, and law enforcement agencies to provide holistic services to minor victims of trafficking and prevent further criminalization. Gracehaven was founded in Columbus to address the rehabilitation need for minor victims of human trafficking. The organization serves youth and families throughout Ohio by providing prevention and support services. 

• Based in Connecticut, Love146 is working to expand its Connecticut Survivor Care Program, which offers an alternative response to the criminalization of minor victims of sex trafficking through the provision of critical services that meet the individualized needs of victims. Love146’s vision is the end of child trafficking and exploitation.  Love146’s Survivor Care Program has served 692 youth since its inception. 

• Hope and Healing seeks to increase the identification of minor victims of trafficking before they become justice–involved and connect them to appropriate services through fostering strategic collaboration among organizations. Hope and Healing is the only agency in Summit and Medina Counties providing specialized services for victims of sexual violence. It has grown from a grassroots volunteer program founded in 1974 to the leading agency providing trauma-informed services to sexual assault survivors. 

• Based in Minneapolis, MN, The Link’s Safe Harbor Division supports victims of sex trafficking through victim-centered, trauma-informed, and developmentally appropriate responses created by and for victims of sex trafficking. The overarching goal of the continuum of services offered by The Link is to provide a safe place for youth who are sex trafficked to heal from trauma and build their protective factors to ensure that they can transition into a healthy and stable future free from exploitation. 
• As a part of this project, The Link is working to expand their capacity to meet the need of LGBTQ2S+ youth and males. The Link is partnering across agencies to continue to identify youth earlier and connect them to appropriate services.

• Develop a judicially led cross system collaborative to better respond to the needs of victims of child sex trafficking who are in the juvenile justice system. 

• Review, revise, and refresh the policies and procedures of the REST docket with a trauma responsive lens. 

• Develop a universal protocol for response to child sex trafficking amongst all our multidisciplinary partners in Douglas County. 

• Develop unified policies and procedures to connect youth who have experienced exploitation or are at risk of exploitation to appropriate resources to meet their needs. 

• Develop policies and procedures based on best practices to connect youth in the VOICES Specialty Court for At-Risk and Trafficked Youth to the appropriate resources and away from punitive responses. 

• Develop policies and procedures to ensure those at risk of human trafficking are identified early and connected to appropriate trauma-informed services. 

• Develop unified policies, procedures, and performance measures for the Youth Empowered for Success Program. 

• Develop a program to meet the needs of youth who are identified as victims of trafficking. 

• Enhance the capacity of the Respect, Invest in, Support, & Empower (RISE) Initiative to meet the needs of court-involved youth who are victims of trafficking. 

• Establish a team of specialized, highly trained, probation officers to work with all identified CSEC cases. 

• TEND Court is working to fill the current legal gaps in order to identify, protect, provide trauma informed services to, and provide justice for sex trafficking victims in Webb, Duvall, Jim Hogg, and Zapata Counties. The court will fill gaps in services such as: shelter services, counseling services, drop-in center, foster care, expungement for minor offenses.