Beyond Victim Identification: A Practitioner's Guide to Designing a Youth Anti-Sex Trafficking Advocacy Program.

Thousands of youth are sexually trafficked each year in the United States. In order to address this concern, anti-trafficking advocates often emphasize the importance of uniform screening protocols to assist with the identification of survivors. Unfortunately, an oft-overlooked component of sex trafficking identification is what to do once a victim has been identified, and how to best meet survivors' complex needs. In this article, the authors provide social work practitioners and other advocates with best practice guidelines for how to design and evaluate anti-sex trafficking advocacy programs for children and youth. These guidelines include considerations related to direct services with clients, community partnerships, and organizational capacity, as well as recommendations for how to begin and then evaluate programming. Regardless of the form selected for the program, all anti-sex trafficking programs should be designed to provide effective, client-centered follow-up and advocacy once a positive identification is made in the community. The recommendations included in this paper are based upon extant literature, the authors' practice experience with survivors, and insights from anti-sex trafficking program evaluations.

Coping self-efficacy and social support as predictors of adolescent sex trafficking exit: Results of a secondary analysis.

INTRODUCTION: Social work case management services are increasingly available to youth who want to exit commercial sexual exploitation (CSE). However, few empirical studies investigate the efficacy of such services, particularly whether these services promote an exit from CSE. Guided by ecological systems theory and the Intentions to Exit Prostitution (IEP) model, this study investigates the efficacy of social work case management services for youth CSE survivors. METHODS: Youth survivors of CSE (n = 95) participated in a one-group, quasi-experimental double pre/posttest design study. Measures included the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), Coping Self-Efficacy Scale (Cop-SE), and a modified version of the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment (URICA) surveys at zero- and six-months following study commencement. The research team also collected demographic and victimization data, the number and type of social work case management services received, and goal plan data. Analyses included repeated measures tests and linear and multinomial logistic regressions to determine if doses of social work case management are predictive of the positive short-term outcomes that are linked to increased readiness to exit CSE. RESULTS: Youth CSE survivors experienced upward trends in perceived social support and coping self-efficacy scores between zero- and six-months following study commencement. Linear and logistic regressions demonstrated that variables like months of service time, trafficking classification, goal counts, race, and age can predict outcomes like survivor social support, coping self-efficacy, and intention to change behaviors that can lead to revictimization. IMPLICATIONS: Results suggest social work case management services that improve coping self-efficacy and perceived social support can lead to cognitive changes that promote an exit from CSE. Practitioners should target services that adhere to dimensions of the IEP as these improvements are likely to support positive outcomes for youth survivors of CSE.