Displaying 1 - 10 of 38
This advocacy brief provides an overview of promising practices and lessons learned to end child immigration detention in the U.S. and sets out a range of policy actions needed to scale up efforts to end this form of violence.
Abstract
Background and objective
Youth with intellectual disabilities involved in child welfare systems are at greater risk of sexual victimization than youth who have not been investigated for child maltreatment.…
ABSTRACT
Sex trafficking involving children is a human rights issue of growing concern, with immediate and lasting impacts on victims. Although victimization is consistently associated with prior maltreatment and foster care placements, reliable estimates of minor sex trafficking prevalence do not exist. In a statewide child welfare database of all children with maltreatment allegations between 2011 and 2016, 3,420 children were investigated for sex trafficking allegations (1.15% of 296,167 children with investigated maltreatment). We used two independent methods to estimate prevalence. A…
Abstract
In this case, we meet Maya, an adolescent girl in foster care who is trafficked for sex. We follow her medical visits for contraceptive care and sexually transmitted infection screening over approximately one year. During this time, she is caught in a cycle of intermittent trafficking and transitioning to new foster homes. Her story highlights many unique risk factors that make children in foster care more vulnerable to traffickers. We also discuss reproductive coercion, its risk factors, socioeconomic implications, and provide guidance for medical professionals responding to the…
Abstract
Background
Federal policy in 2015 expanded the definition of “child abuse” to include human trafficking. As a result, child welfare agencies are newly responsible for identifying and providing services for youth in state care who are or at-risk of commercial sexual exploitation.
Objective
To describe the demographics, state-dependent living situations, and juvenile detention usage of state-dependent commercially sexually exploited youth.
Participants and setting
Eighty-three state-dependent youth (89.2 % female, mean age at identification = 15.5 years, SD = 1.5,…
Abstract
Background
Homeless, runaway, and youth exiting foster care are vulnerable to sexual exploitation, but little research has parsed the societal, community, and individual factors that contribute to their risk.
Objectives
(1) To estimate child welfare characteristics in a sample of homeless young people who engaged in commercial sex (CS); and (2) To compare young people who were sex trafficked (ST) to those who engaged in some other form of CS.
Participants and setting
This study includes 98 homeless young people in Philadelphia, PA, Phoenix, AZ, and Washington, DC,…
Executive Summary
As the response to youth who are victims of sex and labor trafficking has become more comprehensive, there is an increased need to provide specialized programming for these youth within residential placement settings. Across the country child welfare programs and agencies providing services for youth at risk for sex and labor trafficking are adopting new strategies to meet the needs of these youth in a variety of settings. This study outlines the policies, practices, and programming that have been implemented across the US to provide specialized responses to exploited and…
Abstract
Domestic minor human trafficking (HT) is a growing social justice concern, particularly among youth in the child welfare system. This paper uses administrative data to describe the characteristics and experiences of a population of youth in the child welfare system considered to be at particularly high risk of victimization: youth who have run away from foster care. Analyses are based on nearly 37,000 youth with at least one foster care placement in Florida at age 10 or older between 2011 and 2017. We examine the characteristics of youth with and…
Assessing risk of commercial sexual exploitation among children involved in the child welfare system
Abstract
The objective of this study was to assess item characteristics indicative of the severity of risk for commercial sexual exploitation among a high-risk population of child welfare system involved youth to inform the construction of a screening tool. Existing studies have discerned factors that differentiate Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) victims from sexual abuse victims, yet no research has been conducted to discriminate which items in a high risk population of youth are most predictive of CSEC. Using the National Survey …
Abstract: This article demonstrates how structural social work theory and critical consciousness development can be used to help facilitate a transition from a deficit model approach to an inequities perspective in a child welfare system that was working to improve the identification of and services for domestic minor sex trafficked youth (DMST). The response of Connecticut’s child welfare system to the issue of DMST is provided as an example of how a child welfare systems could apply an inequities perspective to a population involved in and at risk for exploitation. Structural social work…