Sex Trafficking of Minors: What Schools Need to Know to Recognize and Respond to the Trafficking of Students
Provides educators with an overview of minor sex trafficking and suggests steps that schools can take to respond, including training staff to recognize signs, developing protocols for responding to suspected or disclosed trafficking, and prevention curricula for students. This tipsheet also suggests ways that state coordinators for homeless education and local homeless education liaisons can help guide efforts within schools to address trafficking.
Educators and Human Trafficking: In-Depth Review
Helps educators understand the various forms that sex and labor trafficking of young people can take, individual and social risk factors and school-specific indicators of trafficking. The brief also includes a series of 'safety check' questions to use when talking with students who may have been trafficked, and additional resources.
Human Trafficking 101 for School Administrators and Staff
Offers a definition of human trafficking, a brief overview of who is at risk, and behavioral, physical and social indicators of trafficking that might be observed by school personnel. Also includes the number to call to report suspected trafficking, and a reminder about the importance of engaging law enforcement in order to protect students' and staff's safety.
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC): Recommended Protocols for Schools
Provides a protocol to use in suspected or confirmed cases of sexual exploitation or trafficking in schools developed by the San Diego County Office of Education. This tool describes different levels of response to suspected grooming, suspected victimization, and confirmed cases of victimization, and includes space to identify local law enforcement and child welfare contacts. This tool can inform other schools' efforts to articulate protocols.
The Identification and Support of Students Affected by Human Trafficking
Provides building-level administrators, teachers, and specialized instructional support personnel with information on how they can effectively identify and support students impacted by trafficking activity. Presented in January 2020, the anniversary of the landmark Trafficking Victims Protection Act, this webinar features presentations by: Ambassador John Richmond, U.S. Department of State, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons; Deputy Assistant Secretary Ruth Ryder, U.S. Department of Education; Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, MSW, Ph.D., Arizona State University; Mary Ellen Smith, MSW, Prince William County Schools (VA); and Harold D’Souza, United States Advisory Council on Human Trafficking.
SOAR for School-Based Professionals
Trains school staff to recognize indicators of trafficking in school settings; utilize a trauma-informed approach; develop a trafficking response protocol; and coordinate services to trafficked students with community partners. This 60-minute webinar is available on demand.
Human Trafficking Awareness for Educators
Provides introductory information on child sex and labor trafficking, training educators and other school staff, building response protocols, youth development as a prevention strategy, and considerations around adopted specialized curricula on human trafficking.
Sex Trafficking and Adolescents: What Adults Need to Know
Helps educators and professionals in other youth-serving systems understand key definitions and concepts related to commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking, factors that can place young people at higher risk, and implications for youth education and service needs. This two-part webinar series also looks at the emerging trend of youth trafficking their peers and ways adults working with young people can incorporate sex trafficking awareness, prevention, and intervention strategies into their programs.
Focus on: Children and Youth
Presents research-based information from the National Institute of Justice Journal that can help inform policy decisions and improve understanding of the criminal justice system. This published issue touches on a wide range of topics that include child abuse, school safety, childhood trauma in the justice system, mentorship, and female genital mutilation.
Human Trafficking in America's Schools: How Schools Can Combat Human Trafficking in Partnership With People With Lived Experience (2022): Describes ways schools can partner effectively with people with lived experience of trafficking, and explores some of the unique benefits these consultants offer.
Fact Sheet: President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
Offers a snapshot of the Administration’s accomplishments from 2021 and plans for 2022 regarding Human Trafficking. The new National Action Plan, released in December 2021, is a comprehensive and forward-looking strategy with over 60 priority actions focused on the foundational pillars of U.S. and global anti-trafficking efforts – prevention, protection, prosecution, and partnerships.
Connecting the Dots: An Overview of the Links Among Multiple Forms of Violence
Provides an overview of the evidence connecting different forms of violence, including human trafficking, and provides a community-wide framework for preventing violence. This report highlights research linking students' connection to schools as a protective factor, and how schools can support whole-family needs in order to reduce risks for violent victimization.
Preventing Intimate Partner Violence Across the Lifespan: A Technical Package of Programs, Policies, and Practices
Outlines the best current evidence on how communities can prevent intimate partner violence (IPV) and its consequences across the lifespan. IPV is closely linked to other forms of violence, including trafficking. Evidence-based prevention strategies include approaches that schools are uniquely positioned to implement, such as teaching safe and healthy relationship skills; engaging influential adults and peers; disrupting the developmental pathways toward violence; and creating protective environments.
College and University Toolkit
Offers tips and resources on how to engage campuses in the fight against human trafficking. The resource includes posters to display in dorms, public areas of campus, and around the community; social action projects that address labor trafficking; and signs of potential trafficking recruitment students may experience online and in person.
NetSmartz Resources for Parents, Educators, and Communities
Offers tip sheets, classroom activities, PowerPoint presentations, and videos on online and smartphone safety for children ages 5 to 17, parents, and educators. These resources include the NetSmartz Student Project Kit, Version 1.5, for middle and high school students, which addresses a range of issues including online privacy, sexting, and unwanted sexual requests through videos, games, e-books, comics, classroom lessons, and tip sheets.
Project STARFISH School Prevention Project
Helps teachers and school administrators integrate awareness about sex trafficking into school activities and classrooms. Downloadable materials include lesson plans, classroom activities, case studies, brochures for parents, and a peer leadership program starter kit. This comprehensive set of resources also includes materials for special education students and English language-learners.
Tricked: Inside the World of Teen Sex Trafficking
Offers comprehensive information about teen sex trafficking for K-12 educators and students in grades 6-12. These short videos, with companion a companion podcast and webcast, were designed by Fairfax County VA) Public Schools to help students spot the signs of sex trafficking and avoid dangerous situations. The collection was produced as part of the district's Family Life Education curriculum, and also includes an overview video for parents that provides "look for's" to help keep their kids out of trouble. The videos are not recommended for children under 12 without prior screening and approval by an adult.
Connecting the Dots: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the Intersection with Human Trafficking
Helps youth-serving professionals across sectors understand how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) influence future violence victimization and perpetration. This webinar, produced by the Family and Youth Services Bureau and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, presents the latest research on ACEs and explains how high ACE scores correlate with involvement in human trafficking. It also offers evidence-based strategies that all professionals can use to enhance their approaches with children and families.
Historical Overview of U.S. Policy and Legislative Responses to Honor-Based Violence, Forced Marriage, and Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting
Provides a global historical perspective of culturally based practices, their current prevalence in the United States, and how federal agencies are responding to these forms of gender-based violence and abuse. The goal of this report is to support law enforcement’s ability to understand and accurately identify acts of gender-based violence in the United States that are rooted in cultural practices.
Human Trafficking in Youth-serving Programs: A Blueprint for Organizations Working with Street Youth, Homeless Youth, and Youth at Risk
Provides information on how runaway and homeless youth are recruited into labor and sex trafficking, risk and protective factors, and understanding victim-centered, trauma-informed approaches to working with youth who have been trafficked. The report offers tips for safety planning, screening for history of trafficking, and understanding and addressing the needs of victims. Cites research demonstrating that caring adults and high school graduation are protective factors against trafficking.
Staying Safe: Tips for LGBTQ for How to Protect Yourself and Your Community from Human Trafficking
Helps LGBTQ youth understand if they or their friends are being trafficked, what puts youth at risk for trafficking, how to protect themselves from exploitation, and where to find help. This guide includes quotes from LGBTQ youth who experienced trafficking that may resonate with at-risk students more than the words of adults.
Labor and Sex Trafficking Among Homeless Youth: A Ten-City Study
Explores prevalence and types of trafficking among homeless and runaway youth ages 17-25 in ten cities in North America. Authors suggest that prevention efforts focused on job skills, housing stability, and healthy sexuality and relationships can build students' resilience to avoid victimization by traffickers.
Combating Trafficking: Native Youth Toolkit on Human Trafficking
Offers culturally sensitive information to Native American youth on human trafficking, ways to protect themselves and their friends, staying safe online, and fighting trafficking in the community. The toolkit describes where trafficking happens, and why it is hard to leave, and offers social media resources for American Indian and Alaska Native youth.
Responding to Youth Homelessness: A Key Strategy for Preventing Human Trafficking
Explores why runaway and homeless youth are particularly vulnerable to being trafficked, and how providing low-barrier access to food and housing assistance reduces their risk. Provides information on common pathways into trafficking, along with recommendations on how schools, social service providers, the child welfare system and law enforcement can work together to protect and intervene in trafficking situations.
