The Children's Bureau awarded nine 5-year grants (2014 - 2019) that will continue the development of the child welfare systems' response to human trafficking through infrastructure development and strengthening of a multisystem approach. Find out more about each grantee below.

Lessons Learned:

King County Superior Court
Seattle, WA
"King County CSEC Program"

King County Superior Court proposes to collaborate with Washington State's child welfare agency to reduce the risk of child welfare youth becoming involved in commercial sexual exploitation. They propose to accomplish this by expanding a well-established juvenile justice/child welfare multisystem collaboration and coordinated infrastructure; enhancing the King County Commercially Sexually Exploited Children Program to improve efforts to identify trafficked youth; and collaborating with Children's Administration/Region 2 South by implementing strategies that target early identification, prevention/intervention, and retrieval of sexually exploited children and youth.

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Our Kids of Miami-Dade/Monroe, Inc.
Miami, FL
"The Miami CARES Project to Address Human Trafficking Within the Child Welfare Population"

Our Kids of Miami-Dade/Monroe, Inc. is a community-based organization located in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The proposed project is to build a collaborative between key partners, which will bring much needed resources to Miami-Dade County and collectively develop institutionalized cross-system collaboration among organizations that address the issue of trafficking within the child welfare population. They intend to build infrastructure, increase collaboration, raise awareness, train first responder staff, interpret and enforce existing legislation, gather data, and ultimately develop infrastructure and protocols for a coordinated child welfare system response to the trafficking of minors.

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Arizona Board of Regents on Behalf of Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ
"Sex Trafficking and Arizona’s Vulnerable Youth: Identification, Collaboration, and Intervention"

The overall goal of this project is to improve the services provided to identified child sex trafficking victims and to promote the long-term safety and well-being of victims of sex trafficking who are under the court's jurisdiction as a result of abuse and neglect. To that aim, this project builds on previous trainings, research, and interventions conducted by the Arizona State University Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research and a wide range of local and statewide partnerships. The applicant proposes to determine which system-based child sex trafficking identification method works best for the Arizona child welfare system; develop, implement, and sustain an enhanced array of trainings to increase awareness of child sex trafficking and promote identification; develop multiagency engagement through regular trainings and meetings; and train service providers serving youth victims of sex trafficking in targeted intervention and treatment protocols that focus on sex trafficking and that are trauma informed with the goal of preventing reentry into child sex trafficking situations.

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University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC
"Project NO REST (North Carolina Organizing and Responding to the Exploitation and Sexual Trafficking of Children)"

The purpose of this project is to increase awareness of human trafficking affecting children and youth involved in the child welfare system in North Carolina, to reduce the number of these youth who are trafficked, and to improve outcomes for those who are trafficked. This goal will be accomplished by bringing together government agencies, organizations, and stakeholders to develop a comprehensive and coordinated plan to address human trafficking among youth involved in child welfare. Through the development of this plan, North Carolina's infrastructure for dealing with human trafficking issues—especially involving youth—will be strengthened and made more effective. In addition to creating a stakeholder group to oversee and advise on the development of the strategic plan, NO REST will implement a set of pilot projects that use the strategic plan for trafficking prevention and provide services to youth involved in child welfare who are identified as victims of trafficking.

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California Department of Social Services
Sacramento, CA
"Preventing and Addressing Child Trafficking (PACT)"

The proposed project intends to address child trafficking by developing a multidisciplinary collaboration with State and local partners; creating a best-practice program model that will include protocols, tools, and service trainings; collecting data and evaluating the outcomes; and disseminating the findings to the remaining California counties and other States. The applicant intends to pilot this project within seven California counties that have the highest risk for child trafficking. The seven counties to be included in the PACT project are Alameda, El Dorado, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Joaquin, and San Luis Obispo.

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Healing Place Serve
Baton Rouge, LA
"Louisiana Children's Anti-Trafficking Initiative (LACAT)"

LACAT is a statewide effort to improve the outcomes in Louisiana for sex trafficking victims who are minors. The goal of the proposed project is to build greater awareness and a better response to the problem of child trafficking within the child welfare population. Healing Place Serve proposes to address the needs of minors who have been sex trafficked and are involved with the Louisiana child welfare system by working with key stakeholders to create a statewide coordinated plan, improving agency infrastructure by developing institutionalized intake and screening assessments, implementing best-practice services, collecting and analyzing data, and evaluating the effectiveness of the project. The project will build internal capacity to work with victims of sex trafficking who are minors and will engage in system-wide outreach supporting capacity building in other systems. Project activities will be carried out through a 24-member planning team with subgroups to address strategic planning, training, services, protocol, and data collection.

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University of Maryland, Baltimore
Baltimore, MD
"The Child Sex Trafficking Victims Support Initiative"

The University of Maryland, School of Social Work (UMSSW); the Maryland Department of Human Resources (DHR), which serves as the State's child welfare agency; and other vital collaborating partners propose this initiative to build internal capacity for addressing the issue of sex trafficking within the child welfare population. They propose to implement the use of a screening tool, which will be in alignment with current intake protocols for minors in the State, and then spearhead efforts to develop a cohesive training plan that will be used by DHR in statewide staff educational opportunities. UMSSW will build upon relationships with DHR, the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and a statewide coalition of victim services providers to review past work and coordinate a more cohesive training response going forward. The 60-month project will build infrastructure capacity between State and local child welfare agencies and victim services providers to ensure that children and adolescents who have been trafficked or are at risk for being trafficked have access to an array of comprehensive, high-quality services.

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State of Connecticut Department of Children and Families
Hartford, CT
"Connecticut’s Human Anti-trafficking Response Team (HART) Project"

The State of Connecticut Department of Children and Families (CTDCF) is requesting funding to support HART and to conduct an indepth analysis of HART's Human Trafficking Response System (HTRS). HTRS is an interagency collaborative that uses specific practice protocols, policies, and procedures to ensure that child welfare workers, law enforcement, and service providers trained in working with human trafficking victims work together to identify, support, and treat victims and high-risk youth. The HART teams are at the center of this system and are interdisciplinary teams that recommend human trafficking policies, procedures, and guidelines to the CTDCF commissioner based on their collective knowledge and experience. The proposed project focuses on four goals: conducting a needs assessment with current stakeholders; developing inter- and intra-agency collaborations and infrastructures; developing a data collection and reporting system; and creating new forums for intra-agency data sharing, research design, and information dissemination.

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Justice Resource Institute
Needham, MA
"Massachusetts Child Welfare Trafficking Grant"

Justice Resource Institute is partnering with the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) to develop sustainable methods within the State's child welfare system for preventing trafficking of minors, identifying trafficking victims, and connecting victims to supports and services. The applicant is proposing to achieve this goal by way of infrastructure development, data gathering, awareness raising, and cross-system collaboration and outreach. The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families and the Support to End Exploitation Now (SEEN) program are partners with the Justice Resource Institute. SEEN is a multidisciplinary response system addressing human trafficking in the Boston area and a nationally recognized model for effective collaboration to identify and provide needed services to trafficking victims who are minors. The four objectives of the proposed project are to foster statewide partnership, develop infrastructure through multidisciplinary teams, strengthen the capacity of DCF and its partners to address trafficking through the development of training and tools, and integrate provisions surrounding child trafficking into existing DCF policies.

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