The Beat: Relationship Violence and Sexual Exploitation
The White House has released for public comment the new federal strategic action plan on services for victims of human trafficking in the United States.
The framework of the 5-year plan was developed in a collaborative federal effort led by co-chairs from the U.S. Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security. It will ensure that all victims of human trafficking in the United States have access to the tools and services they need to escape exploitation and rebuild their lives.
The comment period provides an opportunity for...
“Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others”
by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky with Connie Burk
A social worker encourages a healthier approach to professions that aid people who have experienced violence and trauma.
Everyone brings their job home from time to time. If you work with families and youth who’ve experienced violence and trauma, you may have more than a report to read or email to answer. You might be carting around a feeling of always needing to be there for your clients, a sense of hopelessness, mental exhaustion, maybe even physical aches and pains.
Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, a social worker and educator who has worked with...
The Family and Youth Services Bureau webinar "Understanding the Impact of Trauma in Developing Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs for Tribal Youth," held for FYSB grantees in January, is now available to the public online. The session was chaired by Gwendolyn Packard of the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center and Dr. Carole Warshaw of the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma & Mental Health.
You'll find a video recording, transcript and slides designed to help youth service providers:
- Define trauma, including historical trauma;
- Provide an overview of the biological responses to stress and trauma;
- Recognize...
Last month we shared advice from two runaway and homeless youth programs about how to look for signs of sex trafficking when young people come to your organization for shelter and support. We also listened in on a Web forum cosponsored by the Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime and its Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Fiona Mason and Danny Stewart of Safe Horizon, a New York anti-violence organization, co-hosted the one-hour session, which discusses best practices for providing services to runaway youth and victims of human trafficking session...
“Almost Home: Helping Kids Move From Homelessness to Hope”
by Kevin Ryan and Tina Kelley, with foreword by Cory Booker
The president of an international organization for homeless youth teams up with a New York Times reporter to tell the stories of young people who overcame homelessness. We think you’ll want to recommend this book to people you know.
Four years and eleven stays at a shelter for homeless teens. That’s how long it took for the teenaged Paulie to escape family abuse, drugs and homelessness and to follow his own path in kickboxing and restaurant work.
The ups and downs of Paulie’s story will be no surprise to those...
As Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month continues, we want to highlight a way youth can share how they would respond to relationship violence.
The “You Gotta Do Something!” Youth Video Contest asks young people under age 21 to finish telling the story of Rob and Ashley, a fictional couple who get into a fight at a party. Youth enter the contest by watching a 14-minute video about Rob and Ashley on YouTube before creating their own video to show what happens next.
Young people must be sponsored by a youth worker or teacher to enter. Winning teams receive a set of educational films written by teens and filmed by professionals, or a gift certificate. The deadline to enter is noon Eastern on February 28, 2013.
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February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month, a chance for youth workers to teach young people about healthy relationships and how to protect themselves from physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Research shows that teen dating violence not only affects young people while it's happening. It also can lead to health problems like eating disorders and suicidal thoughts later on in life.
We decided to test two smartphone applications designed to prevent dating violence and sexual abuse by quickly connecting youth to emergency help. The apps, Circle of 6 and OnWatch, were winners of the Apps Against Abuse technology challenge issued by...
“Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale”
by Rachel Lloyd
In this memoir, a well-known advocate exposes the horrors of sex trafficking, and tells us what it will take to create a society that values and protects girls. NCFY read it, and we tell you why we think it’s a good read for youth workers.
Rachel Lloyd grew up in England with a depressive, alcoholic mother and her series of violent boyfriends. By 14, she had dropped out of school. Faking her age, she did factory work to keep a roof over their heads.
“The pressure to have a baby, at fourteen, already feels intense,” she writes in her memoir “Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are...
As we continue to learn more about the reasons young people may be sexually exploited, some researchers say Native American young women may be particularly at risk.
VAWNet, an online resource of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, in 2011 reviewed the research on Native women and sex trafficking (PDF, 781KB). The authors of the review point to a 2007 analysis of police records in Hennepin County, MN, which includes Minneapolis. Native women accounted for nearly a quarter of the prostitution arrests that year—a percentage more than 12 times their representation in the...
The young woman first contacted Bellefaire JCB, a social service agency in Cleveland, complaining of a toothache. Later, she returned because she’d received a card about the organization’s trafficking program from the team that responded to her call. Letting her approach the program on her own terms was key to getting her in the door, says Karen McHenry, director of homeless youth and street outreach programs.
“Some of the kids aren’t ready to come in,” she says. “We get many calls on our homeless youth hotline every day, but it’s whether the teen feels they can really trust us and that we can help get them to a different situation that matters the most."
McHenry says a young...
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