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July 2013

Providers of Service to Victims of Trafficking: A Study for Catholic Charities USA

Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate Georgetown University Washington, DC

Providers of Service to Victims of Trafficking: A Study for Catholic Charities USA

July 2013

Melissa A. Cidade, M.A. Mary L. Gautier, Ph.D. Carolyne Saunders, M.S.

Table of Contents
Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 6 Section I: Survey of Service Providers .................................................................................................... 8 Number of Victims of Trafficking Served ................................................................................................ 8 Access to Services for Victims of Trafficking ........................................................................................ 12 Awareness and Advocacy for Victims of Trafficking ............................................................................ 16 Funding for Services for Victims of Trafficking .................................................................................... 18 Barriers or Challenges to Providing Services to Victims of Trafficking ................................................ 20 Help Needed for Providing Better Services to Victims of Trafficking ................................................... 22 Reductions in Services to Victims of Trafficking ................................................................................... 23 Assistance Agencies Need to Support Victims of Trafficking ............................................................... 24 Section II: Focus Groups of Service Providers ..................................................................................... 26 Victims of Trafficking Served ................................................................................................................ 26 Services for Victims of Trafficking ........................................................................................................ 33 Sources of Funding ................................................................................................................................. 39 Collaborative Partnerships ...................................................................................................................... 44 Trainings ................................................................................................................................................. 50 Final Thoughts ........................................................................................................................................ 56 Appendix I: Questionnaire with Response Frequencies ........................................................................ 59 Appendix II: Focus Group Protocol ........................................................................................................ 63

Center for Applied Research for the Apostolate Georgetown University Washington, D.C.

Executive Summary
In June 2012, Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA) commissioned the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University to develop an evaluation to identify gaps in services to victims of human trafficking and sources of funding for providers of those services. The project includes a survey of CCUSA member agencies that have programs for victims of human trafficking as well as four focus groups with providers of services for victims of human trafficking. This report presents the results of this project for both the survey of CCUSA member agencies and the four focus groups. This summary also draws comparisons, where appropriate, to findings from a previous study on this topic that CARA completed for CCUSA in 2005. The survey instrument for this project was designed by CARA in collaboration with CCUSA staff, adapting some of the questions used in the 2005 survey and adding new questions specifically for this project. CARA programmed the survey online and CCUSA used the results of its 2011 Annual Survey to identify 48 member agencies that reported providing services to victims of trafficking. CARA contacted the executive director at each identified agency by email in early September 2012 to invite them to participate in the survey. By the final cut-off date in mid-October a total of 29 respondents completed the survey for a response rate of 72 percent. Although the number of responses is small, these cases represent the population of known Catholic Charities agencies that provide services to victims of trafficking. Therefore, tests of statistical significance are not appropriate in this case and the percentages reported here represent real differences in the population. Focus group participants were asked questions about the services they offer, the trainings they have provided and taken, and the relationships they have with other providers of services to victims of human trafficking. Representatives from CCUSA recruited service providers in CCUSA member agencies to host the focus groups. Each of these providers then invited other service providers in their geographic area to participate in the focus group. Each of the four focus groups held in Ft. Myers, Florida; Cleveland, Ohio, Louisville, Kentucky; and Salt Lake City, Utah consisted of between six and 12 participants, ranging from local law enforcement to direct service providers and healthcare workers. The focus group protocol was designed by CARA after consultation with representatives from CCUSA. Each focus group lasted between 60 and 90 minutes

Major Findings
Trafficking Victims Served: In the last year, a total of 239 victims of trafficking have been served by Catholic Charities agencies. Agencies are more likely to report serving adult clients than child clients. Agencies also serve many more foreign nationals than U.S. citizens and legal immigrants or permanent residents. They are about as likely to serve labor and sex trafficking victims. The average number of trafficked persons ever served by an agency that has served at least one trafficked victim is 29, with the total number of trafficked victims served ranging from one to 250. By comparison, responding agencies in 2005 reported serving fewer trafficked persons. Those agencies responding in 2005 reported an average of eight trafficked victims ever served, with the total number ranging from one to 50. Agencies in 2005 reported an average of four trafficked persons served in the previous year, compared to an average of nine trafficked persons served in the previous year reported by responding agencies for this survey. Focus group participants reported that most victims of trafficking are either sex or labor trafficking victims, though these two can be intertwined. Other types of trafficking, including drug and organ trafficking, are less common. Service providers usually specialize in serving either adults or juveniles. Providers also point out that there are many cases where the initial crime may have started when the victim was underage but has continued in to adulthood. In focus groups, service providers in most locations also noted that specialized populations based on ethnic or language groups, including foreign nationals, require specialized service programs. Some providers say that their caseloads of victims of human trafficking vary that each is a unique case and there seem to be little in common with other cases.

Services Provided: Over nine in ten (92 percent) respondents say their agency provides information and referral services in-house. About half of respondents say their agency provides employment services (52 percent), clothing (50 percent), family counseling (48 percent) and legal services/advocacy (46 percent) in-house. In 2005, responding agencies reported providing fewer services for victims of trafficking. A third to a half of responding agencies in 2005 reported providing counseling, outreach, social services, or shelter to victims of trafficking. Most service providers who participated in the focus groups said that they offer direct services to victims of human trafficking. However, they also recognize gaps in the services for such victims, including housing, transportation, interpreters and language translation services, and legal and mental health counseling. Some say that these are all interrelated and it can be challenging to provide them in the necessary order.

Budget and Funding Issues: The average total annual budget for trafficking services at an agency is $40,391, with a minimum budget of $0 and a maximum of $250,000. Almost half (45 percent) say federal grants are a source of funding for the annual budget for trafficking services for their agency. Most focus group participants mentioned government as a source of funding, from federal, state, and local sources. They also mentioned that while the money from these sources can be in large amounts, it often comes with restrictive definitions of who is eligible for services and funding. Others mentioned non-governmental sources of funding, like grants from private charities. These funding sources are smaller in amount but are often more flexible in providing services to victims of human trafficking. Over four in ten (44 percent) responding agencies received funds in 2011 from the USCCB as a sub-grantee of the HHS/ORR Per Capita Victims Services contract which was first granted to the USCCB Migration and Refugee Services in 2006. Of those who received funding, the average amount of funding received through this grant was $20,262. Half of respondents (48 percent) say their agency has sought additional funding sources regarding services to trafficking victims in the last 12 months. About one third (35 percent) say their agency has cut back on services to trafficking victim clients in the last 12 months and one quarter (26 percent) say they have reduced the number of clients served in the last 12 months.

Impediments to Providing Services: Focus group respondents indicate that two major impediments to providing services to victims of human trafficking are the definition of who is a trafficked person and the criminalization of victims of trafficking. Each of these can keep victims from coming forward to receive the services they need. One major impediment to securing more funding that was described in focus groups is a lack of personnel to focus on the grant writing and other necessary fundraising activities. Likewise, some mentioned that there is a lack of infrastructure for providing services to victims of human trafficking due to a lack of funding, which can lead to gaps in services. A major impediment to offering or attending more training for providing services to victims of human trafficking is a lack of funding. More than nine in ten respondents say lack of adequate funding (96 percent) and lack of adequate resources (92 percent) are somewhat or very much barriers or challenges to their agency in providing services to trafficking victims. While respondents in 2005 also cited these two issues as the top two barriers or challenges, they were less unified in their agreement as to the magnitude of these challenges. In 2005, 86 percent of respondents cited lack of adequate funding and 80 percent cited lack of adequate resources as somewhat or very much a barrier or challenge for their agency in providing services to trafficking 3

victims. In contrast, respondents in 2005 perceived each of the other barriers or challenges that were asked on both surveys as more of a challenge than did respondents in 2013. In other words, these comparisons suggest that some of the structural barriers or challenges to providing service have been dealt with successfully, while a lack of funding and resources remain most challenging.

How much are these a barrier or challenge to your agency in providing service to trafficking victims? Percentage responding somewhat or very much by year 2005 86% 80 66 66 56 45 37 36 33 2013 96% 92 55 38 26 30 15 14 27

Lack of adequate funding Lack of adequate resources Lack of adequate training Difficulty coordinating with Federal agencies Language barriers Lack of in-house protocols/procedures Safety concerns Lack of knowledge about victims rights Lack of support and isolation felt by service providers

Partnerships and Trainings: In the last 12 months, over one-third of responding agencies (35 percent) have lobbied or endorsed legislation about trafficking, communicated with their legislator about trafficking, and/or provided training to law enforcement. Six in ten (62 percent) have formed or participated in a coalition in the last 12 months, and almost half of responding agencies has given talks or formal presentations to raise awareness about trafficking in their community. More than half of responding agencies (55 percent) have worked with other service providers in the last 12 months to provide services for victims of trafficking. When asked about partnerships, some service providers in the focus groups mention that they collaborate with local law enforcement to secure services for victims of human trafficking. Each of the focus groups outlined the history of their network of providers. Each has a different starting point and a different structure for networking and sharing responsibilities for providing services. Participants in the focus groups mentioned a number of trainings that they have attended that have been particularly helpful to their work with victims of trafficking. These include locally based trainings, nationally sponsored trainings, and online trainings. Many of the service providers have sponsored trainings themselves. These trainings tend to focus on special populations in the area, including immigrant communities, healthcare providers, and law enforcement.

Help Needed for Providing Better Services: More than nine in ten responding agencies (93 percent) report that increased funding would help them provide better services to trafficking victims. Two in three indicate that increased funding would help very much. Responses to this question were similar in 2005, with 88 percent indicating that increased funding would help somewhat or very much in their work to provide better services to trafficking victims. Compared to 2005, responding agencies in this survey were very similar in the percentage who indicated that formal protocols/procedures for working with victims would help them at least somewhat (64 percent in 2005 compared to 60 percent in this survey). Likewise, the desire for more staff and for new services or programs has not changed: about seven in ten need new staff at least somewhat and three in four need new services or programs. On the other hand, respondents in this survey are less likely than respondents in 2005 (64 percent compared to 74 percent in 2005) to indicate a need for formal workshops/training or for new or additional facilities (30 percent compared to 44 percent in 2005).

Introduction
In June 2012, Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA) commissioned the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University to develop an evaluation to identify gaps in services to victims of human trafficking and sources of funding for providers of those services. The project includes a survey of CCUSA member agencies that have programs for victims of human trafficking as well as four focus groups with providers of services for victims of human trafficking. This report presents the results of this project, including the survey of CCUSA member agencies with programs for victims of human trafficking and four focus groups with providers of services to victims of human trafficking. The executive summary also draws comparisons, where appropriate, to findings from a previous study on this topic that CARA completed for CCUSA in 2005. The survey instrument for this project was designed by CARA in collaboration with CCUSA staff, adapting some of the questions used in the 2005 survey and adding new questions specifically for this project. CARA programmed the survey online and CCUSA used results from its 2011 Annual Survey to identify 48 member agencies that reported providing services to victims of trafficking. CARA contacted the executive director at each identified agency by email to ask for their participation in the survey. The e-mail provided a link to the online survey and an individual specific username and password to be used for access. Of these, eight directors declined to participate in the survey because their agency did not qualify, bringing the total number of eligible agencies to 40. CARA sent several periodic e-mailed reminders as well as a final faxed copy of the questionnaire to those who had not yet responded to achieve the highest possible response. By the final cut-off date in mid-October a total of 29 respondents completed the survey, for a response rate of 72 percent. Although the number of responses is small, these cases represent the population of known Catholic Charities agencies that provide services to victims of trafficking. Therefore, tests of statistical significance are not appropriate in this case and the percentages reported here represent real differences in the population. The qualitative portion of the project consists of focus groups with providers of services to victims of human trafficking. Focus group participants were asked questions about the services they offer, the trainings they have provided and taken, and the relationships they have with other providers of services to victims of human trafficking. Representatives from CCUSA recruited service providers in CCUSA member agencies to host the focus groups. Each of these providers then invited other service providers in their geographic area to participate in the focus group. Each of the four focus groups held in Ft. Myers, Florida; Cleveland, Ohio; Louisville, Kentucky; and Salt Lake City, Utah consisted of between six and 12 participants, ranging from local law enforcement to direct service providers and healthcare workers.

To understand the challenges facing providers of services to victims of human trafficking, CARA conducted focus groups of approximately 60 to 90 minutes each, with six to 12 participants in each group, between November, 2012 and April, 2013. Each focus group was guided by a protocol that CARA developed in consultation with representatives of CCUSA and focused on the services provided to victims of human trafficking, including the needs of providers with regard to training, networking, and funding. A copy of the focus group protocol is found in Appendix II of this report. Each focus group was digitally recorded. This report highlights findings from all four focus groups. The first was held in Ft. Myers, Florida, which has an influx of migrant workers, and deals with labor and sex trafficking related to that population. The second focus group was conducted in Cleveland, Ohio, which proved to be a high volume trafficking location due in part to its proximity to the Great Lakes. The third focus group location, Louisville, Kentucky, has additional challenges associated with poor rural communities and trafficking, especially family-driven trafficking. Finally, the focus group held in Salt Lake City, Utah explored the unique relationship between vast land expanses and the ease of trafficking in the West. This report is divided in to two sections: the first section presents the findings of the quantitative portion of this study, and the second section provides an overview of the qualitative data from this study. The qualitative section of the report follows the focus group protocol and is organized according to the six major questions in the protocol. The wording that the interviewer used to frame the question to participants is presented in boxed text. Following the boxed text, the report summarizes major themes that emerged during the focus groups as well as reactions to specific questions that may have arisen from back-and-forth conversation during the focus group. Each section also includes representative comments from the focus groups that illustrate those common themes or reactions. Finally, each section ends with a Case Study. The Case Study is meant to serve as an expanded comment or set of comments that uniquely summarizes the topics mentioned in the focus groups.

Section I: Survey of Service Providers Number of Victims of Trafficking Served


The average number of trafficked persons ever served by an agency that has served at least one trafficked victim is 29, with the total number of trafficked victims served ranging from one to 250. The grand total of all trafficked persons served by these agencies is 776. In the past year the average number of persons served by any of these agencies is nine. In total, over the last 12 months, 239 trafficked persons have been served by these agencies.

From the total number of reported [trafficking victims served in the last 12 months], how many of these trafficked persons were: Average 9 Gender and Age Adult males Adult females Children (under age 18) Nationality U.S. citizens Foreign nationals Legal immigrants or permanent residents 4 4 2 0 0 0 46 44 8 95 103 37 Minimum 0 Maximum 51 Sum1 239

Total Persons Past 12 Months:

1 9 0

0 0 0

10 51 5

17 210 9

Immigration Status Refugees / Asylees / Undocumented 5 T-Visa holders 2 U-Visa holders 0 Trafficking Status Labor trafficking victims Sex trafficking victims Disposition Not seen again after their initial visit Eventually deported Permanent resident status Eventually legally employed Total Persons Ever Served:

0 0 0

45 20 1

128 47 1

5 4

0 0

51 42

129 99

0 0 1 7 29

0 0 0 0 1

2 0 8 51 250

4 0 26 151 776

Note: The subgroups in this column do not sum to the total number of people served in the past 12 months (239) because respondents could enter the total served without entering the subgroups served.

Agencies are more likely to report serving adult clients than child clients. The average
number of men and women served by an agency is four, compared to an average of two children served.

Agencies also report serving many more foreign nationals than U.S. citizens and legal
immigrants or permanent residents in the last 12 months. The average number of foreign nationals served is nine, compared to an average of one U.S. citizen and less than one legal immigrant or permanent resident.

On average, each agency served two T-visa holders and five refugees, asylees, or
undocumented trafficking victims. Only one agency reported serving a trafficking victim with a U-visa. No responding agencies reported that any of the trafficking victims they served were finally deported.

The average number of labor trafficking victims and sex trafficking victims served by an
agency in the past year is about equal at 5 and 4, respectively.

Most trafficking victims served are eventually legally employed, with an average of
seven served victims per agency reaching this status. On average, responding agencies that provide services to victims of trafficking have been providing services for six years, or since 2006. The earliest an agency began providing services is 1982 and some agencies began providing services as late as 2011.

In what year did your agency begin providing services to victims of human trafficking?
Percentage responding

2001 to 2006 31%

2007 or later 59% 2000 or earlier 10%

Proportion of all Victims of Trafficking Served


The numbers below represent the proportion of victims of each subgroup population identified and served by agencies in the last 12 months. For example, 40 percent of those victims served in the last 12 months and identified by gender and age are adult males, 44 percent are adult females and 16 percent are children (under age 18).

From the total number of reported [victims of trafficking], how many of these trafficked persons were:
Percentage of total served in last year

Gender and Age N = 235 Adult males Adult females Children (under age 18) Nationality (N = 236) U.S. citizens Foreign nationals Legal immigrants or permanent residents Immigration Status (N = 176) Refugees /Asylees / Undocumented T-Visa holders U-Visa holders Trafficking Status (N = 228) Labor trafficking victims Sex trafficking victims Disposition (N = 181) Not seen again after their initial visit Eventually deported Permanent resident status Eventually legally employed 7% 89 4 40% 44 16

73% 27 1

57% 43

2% 0 14 83

The majority of victims served in the last 12 months and identified by nationality are foreign nationals. Almost nine in ten (89 percent) are foreign nationals, while 7 percent are U.S. citizens, and 4 percent are legal immigrants or permanent residents. 10

Almost three in four victims (73 percent) identified by immigration status are refugees/asylees/undocumented. Another one in four are T-Visa holders, while 1 percent is U-Visa holders. Almost six in ten victims (57 percent) served in the last 12 months and identified by trafficking status are labor trafficking victims, compared to 43 percent being sex trafficking victims. Of those victims served in the last 12 months and identified by disposition, more than four in five (83 percent) are eventually legally employed. Another one in seven (14 percent) gain permanent resident status, while just 2 percent are not seen again after their initial visit. No agencies reported victims being eventually deported.

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Access to Services for Victims of Trafficking


Services for victims of trafficking can be grouped into three types in terms of access: services that many agencies provide in-house, services where many agencies refer the client to another local agency and services where there is a mixture of access. In the sections below, the column corresponding to the type of access for each service is shaded. Overall, for any service fewer than 30 percent of responding agencies say there is no local provider for the service. Services That Most Agencies Provide In-House Over nine in ten (92 percent) respondents say their agency provides information and referral services in-house.

For each of the services listed below, how does your agency ensure access for victims of trafficking?
Percentage Responding

We provide the service in-house Information and referral Immigration services Interpreter or cultural liaison Life skills Social service coordination Transportation Food Outreach services 92% 77 76 72 70 64 62 60

We provide contract services through a collaborative partner 0% 4 4 0 4 4 8 4

We refer the client to another local agency 4% 15 16 20 22 28 27 32

There is no local provider for this service 4% 4 4 8 4 4 4 4

Seven in ten or more respondents say their agency provides immigration services (77 percent), interpreter or cultural liaison (76 percent), life skills (72 percent) or social service coordination (70 percent) in-house. Six in ten or more respondents say their agency provides transportation (64 percent), food (62 percent), and outreach services (60 percent) in-house.

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Services That Most Agencies Refer the Client to another Local Agency Over eight in ten (84 percent) agencies refer the client to another local agency for child care.

For each of the services listed below, how does your agency ensure access for victims of trafficking?
Percentage Responding

Child care Victim compensation Law enforcement Medical services Dental services Guardianship Substance abuse Protection/safety services Victim impact statement Victim/witness notification Education

We provide the service in-house 4% 13 8 4 8 21 17 0 22 21 27

We provide contract services through a collaborative partner 8% 4 11 19 12 0 12 29 9 13 4

We refer the client to another local agency 84% 75 73 69 68 67 67 67 65 62 61

There is no local provider for this service 4% 8 8 8 12 12 4 4 4 4 8

Over seven in ten respondents say their agency refers the client to another local agency for victim compensation (75 percent) and law enforcement (73 percent). Over two-thirds of respondents say their agency refers the client to another local agency for medical services (69 percent), dental services (68 percent), guardianship (67 percent), substance abuse (67 percent) and protection/safety services (67 percent). Over six in ten agencies refer the client to another local agency for victim impact statements (65 percent), victim/witness notification (62 percent), and education (61 percent). Three in ten (29 percent) agencies provide contract services through a collaborative partner for protection/safety services. This is the type of service where collaborative partners are most used, followed by medical services and housing/shelter (both 19 percent).

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Services for Which There Is a Mixture of Access About half of respondents say their agency provides employment services (52 percent), clothing (50 percent), family counseling (48 percent), and legal services such as court orientation (56 percent) or legal advocacy (46 percent) in-house.

For each of the services listed below, how does your agency ensure access for victims of trafficking?
Percentage Responding

Employment Clothing Family counseling Housing / shelter Access to public benefits (i.e., TANF) Job training Court orientation Legal services / advocacy Counseling groups or support groups Crisis intervention or hotline Mental health services Self-help groups Repatriation services

We provide the service in-house 52% 50 48 39 38 28 56 46

We provide contract services through a collaborative partner 8% 12 12 19 23 12 0 8

We refer the client to another local agency 32% 34 36 38 35 48 40 42

There is no local provider for this service 8% 4 4 4 4 12 4 4

38 38 35 18 9

12 8 11 9 5

42 42 50 55 59

8 12 4 18 27

At least half of agencies provide clothing (50 percent), employment services (52 percent), and court orientation (56 percent) in-house. Approximately the same percentage refers the client to another local agency for mental health services (50 percent), self-help groups (55 percent), and repatriation services (59 percent). Approximately one-third of agencies provide access in-house to public benefits (38 percent), housing/shelter (39 percent), counseling groups or support groups (38 percent), crisis intervention or hotline (38 percent), and mental health services (35 percent).

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Approximately one-third of agencies refer the client to another local agency for employment (32 percent), clothing (34 percent), access to public benefits (35 percent), family counseling (36 percent), and housing/shelter (38 percent). Repatriation services are the least available service, followed by self-help groups. One in four respondents (27 percent) say there is no local provider for repatriation services. Two in ten respondents (18 percent) say there are no local self-help groups for these clients.

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Awareness and Advocacy for Victims of Trafficking


In the last 12 months, over one-third of responding agencies (35 percent) have lobbied or endorsed legislation about trafficking, communicated with their legislator about trafficking, and/or provided training to law enforcement.

Which of these has your agency done in the last 12 months?


Percentage Responding

Formed or participated in a coalition Given any talks or formal presentations to raise awareness about trafficking in your community Worked with other service providers Communicated with your legislator about trafficking Lobbied or endorsed legislation about trafficking Provided training to law enforcement Advertised or run a publicity campaign about the services your agency offers Reached out to former victims of trafficking to engage in educating, lobbying, or publicity about your services

62% 48 55 35 35 35 31 24

Six in ten respondents (62 percent) say their agency has formed or participated in a coalition in the last 12 months. Almost half of responding agencies (48 percent) have given talks or formal presentations to raise awareness about trafficking in their community. About one quarter of respondents say their agency has advertised or run a publicity campaign about the services their agency offers (31 percent) or reached out to former victims of trafficking to engage in education, lobbying, or publicity about their services (24 percent). More than half of responding agencies (55 percent) have worked with other service providers in the last 12 months, including these groups: o o o o o o o ACT, Wings of Shelter, Beauty from Ashes, DCF Advocates for Freedom, El Pueblo Domestic Violence Shelters DWS, UDH, EPS, UYV and AAU East Texas Crisis Center Freedom House International Institute of New Hampshire; American Friends Service

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o International Institute, YWCA, Youth in Need, The Covenant House, Redevelopment Opportunities for Women, Safe Connections, St. Martha's Hall, FBI, The Covering House o Mosaic Family Services o Multiple, too numerous to note. Health, mental health, schools o Nassau & Suffolk County Coalition Against Domestic Violence-Project ReachCatholic Health Services-FIDELIS Health Care-Mercy First-Long Island AntiTrafficking Task Force-Catholic Opening Words-PRONTO of Long IslandWestern Suffolk BOCES-Suffolk County Department of Health ServicesLanguage Line-Mother of Good Counsel Home & more o Trafficking Hope o Wichita Children's Home, FBI, Child Advocacy Center, EMCU, Youthville, Department of Children & Family, District Attorney, Wichita Area Sexual Assault Center o Wichita children's home, Wichita area sexual assault center o Women's Crisis Center, Bluegrass Rape Crisis Center, Center for Women and Families

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Funding for Services for Victims of Trafficking


The average total annual budget for trafficking services at an agency is $40,391, with a minimum budget of $0 and a maximum budget of $250,000.

Which of the following are sources of funding for the annual budget for trafficking services for your agency FY 2011 2012?
Percentage Responding

Federal grants Subsidy from your agency State grants Private donors Private company and/or foundation grants Other sources

45% 17 14 10 10 14

Almost half of respondents (45 percent) report that federal grants are a source of funding for the annual budget for trafficking services for their agency. The federal agencies from whom these respondents report receiving grants include: o DOJ o Office of Refugee Resettlement-URM o ORR o OVC (subcontracting) o OVW Youth Services - Runaway, Homeless & Street Youth o Rescue and restore grant from office of refugee resettlement o VAWA o VOCA, HHS At least one in ten respondents say that subsidies from their parent agency (17 percent), state grants (14 percent), private donors (10 percent), and private companies and/or foundation grants (10 percent) are sources of funding for their annual budget for trafficking services for their agency. State grants that responding agencies report receiving include NYSHT, OVAG, and VAWA. Private company and/or foundation grants that respondents listed include American Friends Service, the Scanlan Foundation, and the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth (a Ministry Fund Grant) Fourteen percent of respondents reported other sources of funding, including the Bishops Annual Appeal, the USCCB, and the USCIR Subcontract. More than one in four agencies (28 percent) not receiving funding from any of the sources listed. About half (48 percent) have funding from only one source, while one in 18

ten has two sources of funding and 14 percent have three forms of funding (not shown in the table). On average (mean), agencies report having 1 source of funding (also not shown in the table). Furthermore, over four in ten (44 percent) responding agencies received funds in 2011 from the USCCB as a sub-grantee of the HHS/ORR Per Capita Victims Services contract which was first granted to the USCCB Migration and Refugee Services in 2006.

Did your agency receive funds in 2011 from the USCCB as a subgrantee of the HHS/ORR Per Capita Victim Services Contract, first granted to the USCCB Migration and Refugee Services in 2006?
Percentage responding

Yes 44% No 66%

Of those who did receive funds from this office, the average amount of funding received was $20,262, with the minimum of $750 and the maximum of $162,432 reported by responding agencies.

[Of those who received funding,] how much did your agency receive in 2011? $5,001 or more 38% $1,000 or less 38%

$1,001 to $5,000 25%

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Barriers or Challenges to Providing Services to Victims of Trafficking


Over nine in ten respondents say lack of adequate funding (96 percent) and lack of adequate resources (92 percent) are somewhat or very much barriers or challenges to their agency in providing services to trafficking victims. Around half say lack of funding (52 percent) and lack of adequate resources (48 percent) are very much barriers or challenges.

How much are these a barrier or challenge to your agency in providing services to trafficking victims?
Percentage Responding

Somewhat or Very much very much only Lack of adequate funding 96% 52% Lack of adequate resources 92 48 Lack of adequate training 55 11 Difficulty coordinating with Federal agencies 38 4 Lack of in-house protocols/ procedures 30 15 Lack of support and isolation felt by service providers 27 0 Language barriers 26 7 Safety concerns 15 4 Lack of knowledge about victims rights 14 4 Other 50 50

Over half of respondents (55 percent) say lack of adequate training is somewhat or very much a barrier or challenge. One in ten (11 percent) says it is very much a barrier. Four in ten (38 percent) describe difficulty coordinating with Federal agencies as at least somewhat a barrier or challenge in providing services to trafficking victims. Over one quarter of respondents say lack of in-house protocols/procedures (30 percent), lack of support and isolation felt by service providers (27 percent) and language barriers (26 percent) are somewhat or very much barriers or challenges to their agency in providing services to trafficking victims. Fewer than one in six say safety concerns (15 percent) and lack of knowledge about victims rights (14 percent) are barriers or challenges to their agency. Three responding agencies listed other factors that are somewhat or very much a barrier or challenge in providing services to trafficking victims. These other factors included:

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o Increased funding to adequately staff programming for victims and training for service providers to effectively administer the program. Increased funding for victims as housing and self-care is difficult to obtain for undocumented persons. o Since the agency is unable to meet all the needs of the victims in-house, what is really needed is the development of wrap-around services in the community to meet these needs. Resources currently available are scant and dont consider the special needs of trafficked victims o We serve domestic violence victims through shelter and outreach. Our client population has trafficking issues, however we have not developed programming specific to trafficking victims. Out new OVW collaborative grants for youth has included training specific to the population.

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Help Needed for Providing Better Services to Victims of Trafficking


Over nine in ten (93 percent) respondents say their agency needs increased funding somewhat or very much to help provide better services to trafficking victims. How much does your agency need the following to help provide better services to trafficking victims?
Percentage Responding

Increased funding New services or programs More staff Formal workshops/training Formal protocols/procedures for working with victims New or additional facilities

Somewhat or Very much very much only 93% 67% 73 35 68 40 64 40 60 30 28 9

Almost three quarters (73 percent) of respondents say new services or programs are
somewhat or very much needed to help provide better services to trafficking victims (35 percent say they are very much needed).

About two-thirds of respondents say more staff (68 percent) and formal workshops/
training (64 percent) are somewhat or very much needed (40 percent say these items are very much needed).

Six in ten (60 percent) say formal protocols/procedures for working with victims are
somewhat or very much needed.

Three in ten respondents (30 percent) say that they need new or additional facilities to
help provide better services to trafficking victims..

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Reductions in Services to Victims of Trafficking


Almost half (48 percent) of respondents say their agency has sought additional funding sources regarding services to trafficking victims in the last 12 months.

Has your agency taken any of these measures in the last 12 months regarding services to trafficking victims?
Percentage Responding

Sought additional funding sources Cut back on services to clients Reduced the number of clients served Eliminated the trafficking program Reduced staff Other

48% 35 26 14 13 33

About one-third of respondent (35 percent) say their agency has cut back on services to trafficking victim clients in the last 12 months. One quarter (26 percent) say they have reduced the number of clients served in the last 12 months. Fewer than one in six respondents say their agency has eliminated the trafficking program (14 percent) or reduced staff (13 percent) in the last 12 months. Other measures that a third of responding agencies say they have taken in the last 12 months regarding services to trafficking victims include: o Increasing staff o Referrals to private attorneys o Referred clients to other programs o Signed on with other agency for subcontract

23

Assistance Agencies Need to Support Victims of Trafficking


When asked what types of assistance agencies such as theirs need most to improve the services it provides to trafficking victims most respondents referred to funding or training needs. All responses to this question are reported verbatim here. 1. Additional funding (!!!) 2. Additional staff 3. Training and technical assistance 1. Adequate funding and responses. 2. Better access to staff training opportunities. Additional funding, Additional training, Collaboration with other law enforcement agencies, Additional staff Additional training on better ways to conduct outreach. Additional funding especially in specific assistance to victims Develop expertise and focus for trafficking victims, work has been in the DV field. Need national direction and best practices. Funding for direct services; outreach and agency/partnership responses. Funding for more staff; training on how to engage our US attorneys more quickly--they have been slow to respond; more information on making strong cases for labor trafficking. Funding to provide direct services to clients beyond public awareness raising and outreach. Increased funding to adequately staff programming for victims and training for service providers to effectively administer program. Increased funding for victims as housing and self-care is difficult to obtain for undocumented persons. More access to funding and training More funding that will allow us to have more staff and provide high quality services. More law enforcement help as it relates to labor trafficking Ours is a special case as we are not currently serving any trafficked persons. The program was stopped in 2010 after a difficult case. New leadership was brought in, all staff received extensive, intensive training, and the MRS department would be ready to serve any clients needing services at this time, but have not received any contacts. Based on my experience transitioning this program and on prior experience at previous agencies, FUNDING is the greatest need to improve services to victims of trafficking. They are left out of many of ORR's main funding streams and ATIP has only a limited scope. At 24

this point in time, I believe most agencies help start or are part of a local Anti-trafficking Task Force or network. If not, then there is certainly a need for further staff and community education. I answered Question 46 on somewhat hypothetically in terms of arrangements and agreements I have made with other agencies, training and in-house services I have lined up and have ready if needed... Share information between Federal and local agencies. To have a human trafficking taskforce. Since the USCCB Anti-Trafficking program was terminated the available funding for trafficking victims has become more limited. In addition, we will soon be facing the conclusion of our federal grant with the Office for Victims of Crime which allows us to provide services to pre-certified victims. Therefore, we believe that the biggest challenge facing trafficking victim service providers will be identifying potential funding opportunities that will allow them to continue servicing the trafficking population. Unrestricted funding to support services to victims and collaboration with local partners We do not have the resources or the internal capacity to provide assistance to trafficking victims. We do not foresee in the near future expanding our program portfolio to include assistance to trafficking victims. We are very grateful to those organizations that do provide such assistance to that target population.

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Section II: Focus Groups of Service Providers Victims of Trafficking Served


To begin, the interviewer asked participants a series of questions about the kinds of victims of human trafficking that they usually work with.
What are the unique characteristics and needs of the victims of human trafficking that you/your agency/organization works with? How do you/would you identify a client as a victim of trafficking? How are their problems/needs similar to those of other crime victims? How are they unique? What is your agencys greatest challenge in working with victims of human trafficking?

Each focus group began with a series of questions designed to better understand the populations served by each service provider. Generally, these populations are first identified as being victims of either sex trafficking or labor trafficking. Participant: Well, I think its important for you to know, not being from down here, what the set-up is. Southwest Florida is unique in terms of the trafficking world only because we are an agricultural community as well as a city. There are a lot of tomato farms and things like that so there is a lot of international human trafficking for labor reasons. Ft. Myers, FL Participant: I would say in the West in general we see a lot of labor trafficking, because we have the farms, the sheep herding, and the agriculture. Right now we are the only one in the surrounding states [who offer services to victims of trafficking]. Colorado, Wyoming they do not have any funding or program for trafficking. So I am getting calls from them and we are actually moving people here, so they can have some help, and have somebody who will help them get a TV set, certification, and all of that. A lot of those are men in the labor trafficking, adult men. I would say that is a majority of our program. Salt Lake City, UT Participant: We had a large number of U.S. born sex trafficking. However, it has gone undetected. The girls were being sent to DT or some other places charged with sex solicitation. We had a lot of sex trafficking that was doing a circuit in Utah. We had the northern, eastern part of Utah that they were going to. They would come from the South and end up in the East, in New York, to do the full circuit. Utah is actually pretty safe for traffickers to come here and move underage girls through. Prostitution here is not like say 26

New York or Chicago or bigger cities, there is no street walking. There is only a small part of street walkers here; its very small. Usually sex trafficking is done here through hotels and parties. [The girls] are just brought in and taken out. A day or two they work the city or state, and then they take off. It is a different dynamic. They are going undetected. I think a high level is going undetected. They get on the website, and they book the dates; they come and work them and take them out again. They dont establish a place where you are getting massages. We are getting to those slowly, but the other ones are just moving too fast. They move too fast. Salt Lake City, UT The focus group in Ft. Myers, Florida which is home to a large transient population of migrant workers highlighted the connection between sex trafficking and labor trafficking, saying that they are sometimes inter-related. Participant: And the labor- trafficking and the sex trafficking are sometimes interrelated. There was a case in which brothels were set up for young females to service the laborers. It was a pretty notorious and sad situation. I dont know if cases like that still exist. Participant: Yes, they still exist. Participant: We work specifically with sex trafficking. We have 55 open cases but that wont all be trafficking some of those will be sexual exploitation and some severe sexual abuse. Of those cases, one of those is a male who was sex trafficked. Ft. Myers, FL Once the type of trafficking is discussed, many providers then outline the demographic groups that their organization serves. Usually, the service providers are limited in the type of victims they can serve, whether through funding tied to specific regulations or by access to services for specific demographic groups. Many providers mentioned that they are either adult or juvenile victim centered. Participant: The majority of what we see is women over the age of 18. We are currently assisting probably around 24 victims, a lot of mental health. You know, in these instances they are not necessarily, as law enforcement or prosecutors might say, actual victims of human trafficking because they havent been prosecuted, law enforcement hasnt labeled them as such because of their histories and their stories. Cleveland, OH Participant: Well, in my case it is mostly adults, skewing higher toward female, although I have a lot of male clients as well, and a few minors. The needs are pretty varied, its kind of hard to hone in on one partyou cant say that female victims of sex trafficking all need the same services...it varies with each individual, depending on their situation and background. Mostly adult females though. I dont have the numbers in front of me, but its about a 70-30 female-male ratio, could be a little less, perhaps...60-40. Ft. Myers, FL

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Participant: All our cases are referred cases, referred to us. So we dont go out and look for those cases. Unless locally I dont think we have any unaccompanied minors. I dont think any of the children were found locally, here. They all are referred to us. But if these guys found any kids they can always refer them to us. We have to go juvenile court to get the custody and work our way through that, which is not difficult to get that. We have a system that we can get custody and guardianship within a day, without any problem, sometimes before the child comes to Salt Lake City. Participant: The good thing though is once they come to the program, even if they reach age eighteen, some judges are saying so long as you are in my jurisdiction you will stay in the program until age twenty-one, which is good for us because we can provide a lot of services for the kids. Participant: The challenge [is] that we have is sending the immigration attorney to advise the kids that this is a great program and they provide all these services. So the kid asks, How long do I have to be in the program? Of course, their attorney advices that when you are eighteen, its a voluntary program, so you can exit anytime you want. But when they come here, that is not the case. So that is the challenge that we have to explain to the kids. Its not up to us, and it is not up to you. Its up to the judge to decide. That is challenge for us to work with the kids. Salt Lake City, UT In the Louisville focus group, participants noted the connection between adult victims and their experiences as juveniles. In this continued victimization, the lines between offenses perpetrated during the juvenile years and those in the adult years can become blurry. Participants [We serve] not as may kids; mostly adults. Someone already mentioned this before, but by the time we get people into services, they could have been trafficked for a decade. I have people who are in their fifties who are in my case load, who were initially trafficked at age thirteen. There is a huge problem there with, by the time we are able to help them, what were able to do for them, when we could have potentially caught them sooner perhaps working through other systems that they were originally a part of. I think that there is a crisis there of identification. Facilitator: So there is a false dichotomy there between youth and adults because many of the adults are coming with this backstory that started in their youth. Is that what youre saying? Participant: I can only speak to my case load currently. The bulk of my caseload the overwhelming majority were pretty much born in Louisville, raised in Louisville, and trafficked in Louisville, and were trafficked through things like strip clubs. Because they are already working in the legal sex industry, there are boundary violations that seeped into trafficking, and they themselves didnt recognize it for a long time. Also, no one really saw them as a victim or potential victim. They have been in it for so long and, by the time someone comes along and screens them, it has been twenty years. I feel like, for me, we put a lot more attention on kids and maybe not adult domestic victims. I think that it is important that that is where it often starts when people are minors but, for folks who are older and of a different generation, we dont place a focus on them. Participant: A big commonality that I have seen among domestic and foreign national victims is that many of them were first victimized at a very young age. Some of them are 28

identified while they are still minors and others not until they are adults, but many, if you go backwards with them through their history, were initially trafficked as children. I think that, for Kentucky, our statistics show that it is just under 50 percent of the clients who were trafficked as children. Participant: It is a continued victimization. It is not always trafficking. There are these points in their lives where they were trafficked, but what many of us have seen is that many of them had a previous history of victimization in some way or all of these conditions that made them vulnerable to being trafficked. Often times, also, if they are not immediately rescued following the trafficking, many times they are re-victimized in other ways before they finally are identified or receive services. Many clients weve had have been re-victimized through domestic violence, separate from trafficking, or other types of abuse or violence rape, labor exploitation before they finally received services. Participant: Its just messy. You have somebody who its not always a linear thing that occurs was caught up in pimp control for a year and managed to escape, but started doing it on their own voluntarily working at a strip club and maybe met someone with whom they formed an intimate relationship, and that became domestic violence. When, for example, people come to our doors at a domestic violence agency, we see them as a domestic violence victim because we look at the immediate. We dont always do all the background work we could do to say to them, Oh, youre also a victim of trafficking due to this particular event way back when. Depending on so many factors, it is not always clear-cut. Louisville, KY Most participants of the focus groups noted that some of the local victims of human trafficking belong to specific language or ethnic groups or are foreign nationals. These victims have a specific set of unique challenges to providing services, including language and cultural barriers as well as navigating the immigration process in this country. Participant: I am an immigration attorney, and I provide immigration legal services to people who mostly arent victims of human trafficking. The specific needs of the trafficking population are immigration services, but I think the hard part is identifying them and getting them to feel comfortable. In the other case, the gentleman was not comfortable going forward. He recognized that he was a victim, and just would not consent to talking to law enforcement and meeting with us after the first meeting. In the consultation, he got very scared. Identification, I think, is the hardest part. Louisville, KY Facilitator: You mentioned something about the Thai case. Can you tell me what the Thai case is? Participant: Its a labor trafficking case that is a public information case now. They estimated about a thousand people throughout the nation that had been trafficked through Global Horizons, an employment agency. They were doing the pineapples in Hawaii. They took them around the nation and were working them. So it turned out to be big, and Utah had a link, because we had about sixty-something people from Thailand.

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Participant: [T]he attorney with Utah legal services he has been wonderful to work with. He processed two hundred-something plus visas for that case alone. We had secondary victims also for when the [family is reunited]: kids come, parents, aunts or whatever. So we had over two hundred people. That was not easy. (Laughter) That was like a nightmare. That was a huge nightmare. Salt Lake City, UT Participant: It seems more complicated for the foreign national victims sometimes because of that issue of language access and how it might differ in different parts of the state. And I have to say that, at the basic level, the discrimination or racism that might exist in that community a good ol boys network allows for these things to happen around them that they cant maneuver through. And that seems specific in many cases to the foreign national clients. Participant: I see it oftentimes in a more problematic, significant way, where it feels like the folks who are in the positions of authority or power or positions to make a difference in that way or make it better for them are not doing it, whereas, in some of the more urban areas, that happens less or, at least, were able to maneuver through it better. In rural areas, it seems much more problematic. Louisville, KY There were a few rarer types of victims of trafficking that were also mentioned in the focus groups. Two particular types that were mentioned include organ trafficking and cases of domestic servitude. While these rarer cases are outside of the norm for victims of trafficking, they do stretch the resources of providers who are often limited in what they can provide to specific populations. Participant: Organ trafficking in minors we also saw that. Facilitator: Organ trafficking, like your internal organs? Tell me about that. Participant: We had a very rich family that needed an organ for their son who is sick. So they brought a child from Guatemala. They told the family that the child was going to go to school. It was a goodwill type thing. But we got a tip that the child was here, and that the child was going to be used for organs, to take out the organs. It was the little information that we had, and it turned out that the doctor was going to sell the rest of the organs. So the kid was not going to stay alive. They were going to take as many organs as they could and sell them through organ brokers. Luckily, that stopped before it could even happen. The other ones were similar to that. They are usually young kids that are used. We had a couple of older women that were drugged and the organ was taken and they woke up like that. We saw mostly younger children, because I think they are easier to go undetected. If you bring a child in, an adult can go around by themselves. Somebody will miss [an adult], but if it is somebody they bought over there, nobody is going to miss him. We had a huge number of cases of drug trafficking, which blended into human trafficking. Those were largely our largest, most ruthless cases. Salt Lake City, UT Participant: I think they run roughly parallel to the cases you see nationally, so weve had domestic servitude cases that are so much like cases across the U.S. We dont have 30

diplomats or those particularized cases, but we have the same domestic servitude cases with doctors and CEOs or other high-power people exploiting folks in their homes. We have a big horse industry here, so we have a lot of concern for horse farms and the people who staff the horse industry, the racetracks. Cleveland, OH Finally, in some cases, the victims of trafficking did not fit under a larger category. Participants described their services as being administered on a case-by-case basis that there is no one typical victim of trafficking in their area. Participant: We also have very rural, isolated cases. One of the earliest cases I worked on was in a tiny, tiny, eastern Kentucky, Appalachian town, and it was in a Chinese restaurant. And so there is no rhyme or reason of where this will pop up. A lot of our prosecutions have been in rural areas, which actually makes sense given that Kentucky has very high indicators of child mortality and poor child wellbeing and children in poverty. It makes sense; we have developing nation conditions in part of our state, so it makes sense that you would see kids trafficked there. There are not many options. Louisville, KY Facilitator: So it sounds like there are sex trafficking and labor trafficking, there are adults and children, there are minors with children, there are adults with children, and there males and females. Would we agree with that? All: Yes. Facilitator: Yes, and it sounds very case by case. Would you agree with that? All: Yes. Cleveland, OH A Case Study in how the types of victims of trafficking have specific needs was discussed in an anecdote from the focus group in Cleveland, Ohio. In this situation, the victim of trafficking is a foreign national, an unaccompanied minor, and has no English language skills. She is in a rural area and the provider describes the harrowing escape from the farm where she was being held. Participant: [Participants name] and I have been out the door in a flash many occasions, but this one was very strange. I had a call from another legal aide. This other attorney said, thank God you answered the phone. He said we have an interpreter here who is actually speaking to a human trafficking victim, a child, a girl who doesnt know where she is, can describe where she is, doesnt speak English. Shes from Mexico, but doesnt speak Spanish; [instead, she] speaks this native dialect. Shes in Ohio and they were in California and she had this card somehow and thankfully this interpreter was with her the whole time, even though it was across country. So we are doing a three-way call and using Google maps. We located her in the middle of a dairy farm in the middle of [a rural] county. Somehow the workers knew she was left alone at home, collected her a day or two before, took her there, and she said to us, I havent eaten because there is no kitchen, the house I am in is on a dirt road and I hear water. I knew by looking at the map it was so weird that she wasnt in the main buildings; she was actually in a bunk 31

room or in some shed in the back of the property. So late in the day, first of all, its out of my [jurisdiction] we work in counties it wasnt one of our eight counties, so I couldnt tell the boss, Im going. And he said youre not going alone anyway and that late in the day what could we do, we called the FBI and we played fifty questions with the FBI and we werent sure where and we stayed and waited for follow-up calls and didnt hear anything. The next morning I had also called you, and you (pointing to other participants) and I was losing my mind the next morning we hear that the FBI couldnt get there and she wanted to get out of there before the workers got back because they had already molested her and she wanted away from there. I still dont know what happened in the end, but I know that, because she was under-age they sent local authorities to collect her. The FBI victims advocate was interviewing her and that interpreter was with her still. From our information, she was 15-16 years old, had been brought to the United States, or sent to the U.S. by her mother in care of another relative, who felt that that house wasnt appropriate for a young girl by herself. She ended up in another relatives house, but he was working and so, it was really bizarre. So I think about that one. Participant: She was taken to [name of place] and we tried to inquire, I think the authorities there with the FBI and the victims advocate, they took care of the needs. We did offer our services, but she was rescued. Cleveland, OH

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Services for Victims of Trafficking


Participants were next asked a series of questions about the services their agency provides to victims of human trafficking and where the gaps are with regard to providing services. Some mentioned direct services, while others talked about the impediments to providing more services.
In your experience, how adequate are the services currently available to victims of trafficking? What gaps do you see? What services are available in this area to victims of human trafficking? What other services do you see a need for that are presently not being met by you or other service providers? Are there other services your agency would provide if you had more resources?

Most of the participants at the focus groups are involved in providing direct services to victims of human trafficking. These services can range from housing and counseling to finding interpreters and other services. Many also identified the gaps in providing services to these victims. Participant: Were in this Humility of Mary Housing because of a study done initially by the collaborative with the help of a funder to see what services were out in the community before we started this. The need that came up was housing and in our county we have a motto called Housing First where the idea is to get people into housing immediately and then to get them services and what we have found not being in this county until recently it that with young people they need the services and the housing combined, so weve struggled a little bit of that. Cleveland, OH Participant: There are a couple of private shelters that have opened in the state that are specific to women coming out of the commercial sex industry. They focus largely on women coming out of, specifically, strip clubs, which may or may not overlap with trafficking in some cases. So its not specific to trafficking survivors, and it certainly only has that sex side to the trafficking. Appropriate shelter services are such a vital need. Its one of the most expensive needs, apart from therapy, that are consistent, ongoing needs that you know a survivor has. We need it for foreign national and domestic victims. We need it for children and for adults. We know that there is this gap for children in need of these services who cannot get into the child welfare system because of the nature of the abuse or neglect that happened to them; they might not become a DS case. Sometimes the only housing option that is available for these children is the Department of Juvenile Justice; theyre put in detention. Housing services are so needed, they are so limited, and they are so vital to a victims recovery and preventing future re-victimization. I think its so vital, and we just do not have the funding to provide various shelter services, and we certainly dont have dedicated shelter for trafficking victims, and its a vital need. 33

Participant: Even when we can be creative with how we utilize the shelter services that we do have, there is still a huge gap there for men. Facilitator: Can you say more about that? Participant: Most of the places we have been able to use are domestic violence shelters in our area. In order to house a male victim, we have had to use hotels or other kinds of things because the majority of shelter housing is for women and children. Louisville, KY Participant: Is affordable housing available? Yes. But it doesnt matter if housing is only $400/month if they dont have child care, they cant get a job they cant pay it. Its very difficult to get cash assistance to hold off until their name comes up for child care cash assistance requires you to do an amount of volunteer hours during the week without your children but if you dont have child care for those volunteer hours you cant receive cash assistance. So we have women in the most affordable housing and they were victims of trafficking years ago and went into the sex industry on their own after that and are trying to get out and it always goes back to the child care issue the minute we solve that there are jobs available and then they could pay the rent its this cycle. Ft. Myers, FL Participant: [A] lot of times hiring an interpreter who kind of understands the professional responsibilities of an interpreter, such as confidentiality, some form of rules, is very difficult. Especially in the context of human or domestic minor trafficking because if I speak Korean and if someone is trying to call me to help as an interpreter and I dont know what my connection is with them; this is some person, we try to hire, we dont know what the connection is with that person, [and] its very challenging. Even though there is a person that could help we dont know how to screen the confidentiality or conflict of interest or issue. That was another big issue or challenge that we had. Participant: [W]e were on the spot and had to try to get interpreters. We were in an area, which really didnt lend itself to finding interpreters. It was just that particular situation, but we kind of thought that the interpreter issue was really very key to communicate and also if we were in that situation again, we would need to, we tried to talk to the women in a neutral way and location, but we were actually screening them in the spa and that wasnt really very conducive to what we were trying to do. Cleveland, OH Participant: Transportation is huge and I can tell you that after personnel its the biggest part of our budget. Transportation is tremendous not just the expense of the transportation mileage and gas and such but the time the staff time that is taken in transporting is tremendous especially because we cover a large area and theres a lot of travel to Miami because of the legal case management piece. Weve spent a lot of time trying to coordinate our efforts and were taking as many people as possible all at once so a lot of time is spent around organizing transportation as well. Ft. Myers, FL Participant: I think, we dont have enough pro-bono attorneys as well. Training is another issue. We can find attorneys, but we need to train them. Once they are trained 34

then they will be able to do the attorney duties. Now we only have a handful of attorneys. They are already exhausted. Salt Lake City, UT Participant: There arent also enough mental health counselors who are trained in human trafficking. Few people who are right now. Participant: It is even harder to find a therapist who speaks the language who is also trained in human trafficking. They do in the Valley Mental Health have a sex abuse unit, but at the same time they are not familiar with human trafficking clients. Even though they are trained in sexual abuse, sex trafficking victims are different. They had to realize that. Therapy is not just therapy. Participant: It takes time getting training for the therapist. [Also,] a lot of our clients are not in Salt Lake City. They cannot come to therapy in our treatment from one of our therapists. [The victims] are still in very rural areas. We are allowed to travel to them; we go to them to provide services. But we cannot have our therapist travel to them. Salt Lake City, UT The focus group in Louisville, Kentucky, made the connection between housing, language services, and transportation. They find that access to language services is not consistent in very rural communities. Likewise, given the rural nature of so many of the cases, transportation and housing can become cumbersome, particularly as it relates to procuring access to services. Participant: In eastern Kentucky, there are places that dont have cell phone service. Youre talking about extreme isolation in some of these areas. From the law enforcement partners: they talk about, Thats fine if you talk about language line. We cant get cell phone service. I think that nobody has really figured out how you do this work in rural really rural areas. Thats one gap. We hear about it when officers talk about what to do with a run-away at two a.m. in a really rural place where police response might be an hour. Facilitator: So what do they do? Participant: They do the best they can. What we recommend to themis to try to transport that person to a place where you can use the internet. It struck me that there are these places that have these basic, basic needs where to even take somebody. Participant: In the rural areas, that challenge of providing proper language access is still a major, major issue. Again, the laws say one thing, but the reality is far different. It's so challenging for trafficking victims because shelter options are so limited that maybe the only place you can find appropriate shelter for them is in a rural area because all their space isnt taken; well then there is no language access. Theres not even one person there who can speak their language. Theyre not familiar with language access. They might have language line available to them, but they dont use it often. The victim feels very isolated and might make a choice to go back to something that is re-victimizing because they feel isolated, and we know that feeling of isolation based on language is so damaging. Participant: and transportation. Thats a huge issue. There are no buses. Those needs are very, very huge. 35

Participant: We have areas that dont even have cab service in many of our counties. Weve had to call a cab service in Lexington to drive to a rural area to take somebody a few miles and then come back to Lexington. Weve had to be really creative about that. Facilitator: Because there is no local transportation, is what youre saying. Participant: Theres no bus system, no cab service Facilitator: And you need transportation, in this case, to coordinate services? Is that what youre saying? Participant: Thats right. To get them from the shelter theyre staying in to the therapist theyre seeing. Or from the shelter theyre staying in to the grocery store. Or doctors offices Louisville, KY When asked about the type of services provided to victims of human trafficking, many participants mentioned that two specific impediments stood in the way of offering more services to victims of trafficking. The first of the impediments has to do with definitions of who is considered a victim of trafficking and how that definition fits within the mission of the agency. Participant: I only have funding for foreign nationals, and I know that that has been an issue. I think that there is this assumption and this is coming from me, so take it for what it is worth that domestic victims can get benefits and can get all this support, and that is not necessarily the case. Sometimes they have a record and they cant get a job. This assumption that it is all going to work out They need that funding. They need that assistance. The only funding stream that I have is for undocumented foreign nationals. Consequently, in the past year, I havent used it even one time, so I have this pool of funding that I cant use. Its very frustrating because it is very narrow. In addition to that, the person has to have been trafficked in the United States. Suppose they were trafficked in their country of origin and fled here: that wouldnt work. Im sure everyone else can speak to their own funding issues. Participant: In my case and in the case of some others here, the funding that you have is specific only to victims of sexual violence sex trafficking, labor trafficking that involves sexual violence which, of course, is not every case. You have these funding streams that are only for domestic or foreign national victims typically just foreign nationals. So you have many folks who dont fit into those categories, so how do you provide any fewer services for them? They typically need the same amount of, if not perhaps more, services for different reasons. The funding is very specific in many situations. Kentucky made many efforts to get funding from various different streams, in particular the federal funding stream, which is the most significant funding specific for human trafficking work in the whole country. Unfortunately, it seems that the focus is on specific areas of the country that exclude places like Kentucky. Not being inside the minds of the folks who are making some of these funding decisions, it appears that the focus is on, perhaps, very urban areas, where there is an assumption that there is more trafficking there based on the geography of the area or a history of certain cases there that make people believe that it is happening at a higher rate or because of the proximity to a certain border or because of their association with lot of international activities. Maybe there is an assumption that more trafficking happens in those places. What we know because of our work in Kentucky is that Kentucky is seeing the same kinds of trafficking 36

here. It can be argued whether trafficking is happening at a higher rate or not in different areas versus Kentucky. I would suspect that is per population. If you were to take our population and compare the amount of trafficking happening, I imagine it would be very similar because were seeing the same exact kinds of cases here, but, obviously, we have a much smaller population here. Funding decisions that are made might be in large part because of our location or geography, as opposed to the reality of what kind of trafficking is happening here and what kind of services are needed for victims in the area. Louisville, KY Participant: Well, working with pre-certified victims, victims who dont have human trafficking status, a certification letter, the funding is very limited. For the Ohio area, at least for the Cleveland area I know Columbus has funding through OVC, which is the Victims of Crime Office, but Cleveland doesnt have that. I dont know what you guys do for pre-certified victims. Its really hard to work with my funding; yes we could serve pre-certified, but then it limits the amount of money we have left for when they are certified and cannot reach those refugee services. Its finding free services that have been a struggle. The main focus is human trafficking for domestic victims, and the foreign population is, the funding is not well-developed to serve that population. Cleveland, OH Participant: The application process [for trafficking status] takes three months or four months, unless it is a lawyer who has done it before, multiple times. [One local lawyer who does this a lot] can get it done pretty quickly, but there is only so many cases he can take, and he cant take sex trafficking. In our program, we can only have them for nine months, pre-certified. Sometimes there is this gap where they are legally not allowed to work and they are out of our program and they dont qualify for refugee benefits yet. It would be great to have emergency funds for people that it happens to. Some people it works out within nine months that they get their certification, and it is a smooth transition. There are those that have a couple months gap. That is hard. I would say housing is our biggest issue as far as client services go. Salt Lake City, UT Interrelated with issues of identifying and certifying trafficking status is the second impediment to services for some victims: criminalization. Some victims and some communities see the victim of human trafficking rather as a perpetrator of criminal activity, especially prostitution. This keeps some victims from coming forward and also keeps some victims from getting the appropriate treatment and services. Participant: I think the need, when we talk about survivors or victims, is education because I remember [Participants name] you saying that victims or survivors dont have the language themselves. Theyre never going to come and say I am a victim of human trafficking. All they know is something bad has happened to them. Lots of cases they blame themselves, or they started drinking and taking drugs, or thats part of the problem. As a result, they show up as someone who has a drug problem or is an alcoholic, or as another issue. So I guess I cant emphasize enough that need for education, whether its the public, first responders, whatever because even in well-educated circles you continue 37

to hear the child prostitute did [something] and [my reaction is] what? If you understand the federal law its a prostituted child, some adult did something to this child. Cleveland, OH Participant: The law enforcement issue, other than the FBI, with the Victims Advocates, many people in the counties that we serve do not think there is a problem because they still see it as prostitution. I remember giving several education programs and people saying thats not a problem, this has been happening forever, its prostitution, and Im like you just listened to this and thats the feedback?! Cleveland, OH Participant: You may have people at the Department of Juvenile Justice who do therapeutic interventions with kids or have trainings on child sexual abuse, but they dont necessarily have training on what its like to be a 15-year-old and be essentially on your own and on the streets and in sex work and have all the stigma of being called a whore. What are the different interventions there? Its not just the training on what trafficking is; what does that mean for when you screen somebody? What kind of language you use? What are the therapeutic interventions? What kind of group work do you need to do? That skill building is lacking. In Kentucky, weve saturated a lot of professionals with surface training on trafficking, but we havent done that second level [training] that would translate into services [and] how they actually do their jobs. Louisville, KY The Case Study below from the focus group in Salt Lake City, Utah, outlines the creative ways that these providers pull together resources to provide services to victims of human trafficking. In this case, the human trafficking survivors were in a very rural part of the state, and service providers had to find mental health providers who were willing to travel to provide counseling. Participant: Its difficult. In a lot of the cases we have from rural areas, you can look for service providers and give training and just hope for the best. As a service provider in Salt Lake The way we had mental health services is that we had a contract with our therapist here that had experience in dealing with human trafficking, especially men. Twice a month we would take the whole day, go up, gather all the men [former trafficked victims] in groups in different cities, and she would spend the whole day with them teaching classes. There were some individual teaching, but most of it was done in a group environment. The men would call her every once in a while for advice. They had the connection. In two weeks they would all be there again [meeting and learning in a group setting]. It wasnt ideal but it was the only thing we could do at the time. We asked the men if they thought it was something beneficial to them. They liked it, because the therapist tells them things and it became something to look forward to. We had positive feedback. Except when they were in crisis, they wanted her to be there. She could still talk to the men via phone and try to defuse the situation. So we had to be unconventional in our service providing. Whatever we could find, we would try to use. Salt Lake City, UT

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Sources of Funding
Following the questions on the types of victims service and services the agency provides, participants were then asked a series of questions on the sources of funding for their agency. Reponses were generally categorized as governmental, non-governmental, and challenges to funding.
What are your agencys main sources of funding for programs for victims of trafficking? How has this funding changed over time, particularly recently? How have funding changes impacted your agencys ability to offer services? What has your agency done to make up for any changes in funding for services to victims of human trafficking, if anything?

Many participants mentioned governmental sources of funding for their services for victims of human trafficking. These sources are federally, state, and locally funded, and often have definitional limitations constraining for whom the money may be spent and for which services. Participant: For the victims, my program is funded through the Office of Refugee Resettlement and we could serve pre-certified victims, but the funding is limited to $300 dollars for the duration of the program, which is 12 months. [I]f you have a pre-certified victim and nothing else, you have to use that funding. Lack of funding for pre-certified victims is just is ridiculous. Cleveland, OH Participant: Historically, we were able to start a lot of this programming with federal money, through the Department of Health and Human Services, the rescue and restore grant that we got. It was a limited grant; it did get renewed, so it was three years. It allowed us to jumpstart a lot of the work. After that, funding was, of course, very limited. We havent, since then, been able to get trafficking-specific funding. What we have been able to get is some funding that is not intended for trafficking work, but, in a creative way, you can fit it into and Im speaking specifically to things like VAWA and other federal dollars that are for victims of sexual violence and victims of sexual assault that trafficking certainly fits within the realm of that if there is the sexual violence, but it doesnt include all victims. Its been a way to do our work. Thats been our largest funding stream using federal dollars in creative ways to serve a smaller category. Louisville, KY Participant: Funding pretty much from ORR, who can only serve once they are certified, both the [unaccompanied minors] and the adults. The adults coming into the program, we will conserve them in [a certain funded] program, which is ORM funded program main employment. It pays a lot of things: we can help them with housing, transportation, health, and everything that they need. They can stay in that program for six months I 39

think. We can provide all those services. The kids are also an ORR funded program, but through the state. Facilitator: Is that annually renewed? Is that guaranteed money? Participant: It is an annual contract signed through the Department of Workforce services in the State office, in the state of Utah, to pass through funds. Salt Lake City, UT Another major source of funding for these agencies is non-governmental sources, including charities and private grants. Participants note that the funding from non-governmental organizations is less, but it is more flexible, with fewer requirements attached. Participant: And we have gotten some private funding from foundations, but it has been a smaller amount. But the nice thing about private funding is that it is a lot less specific, so, a lot of times, that private funding can be used for any kind of trafficking victim male, female, labor or sex trafficking, foreign national or domestic. So that has been a very small amount. And, of course, we sometimes get donations from the community or folks, and that is a stopgap. That allows us to get that one thing that victim needs that day that we werent able to do. So it doesnt allow us to do ongoing, big work, but it allows us a stopgap to at least provide for some basic needs. Louisville, KY Participant: Weve been noticing that foundations have been really interested in human trafficking. Theres been a I know the Cleveland Foundation has been really interested, I know you guys have had some foundations The Sisters of Charity so theres been a big push. Participant: I must say that in the Youngstown diocese with the six counties, theres always, if there are victims who need medical care or services from housing, that funding has always come largely from the Catholic Charities. Weve had victims go to Mercy Hospital and St. Elizabeths in Youngstown, so just by necessity we have found the services through the Catholic community. I think in those areas because its somewhat rural too, those probably are the main agencies that provide services. Cleveland, OH Participant: We just received a grant to the community foundation to do a collaborative program with ACT and Catholic Charities to identify victims, mostly domestic minor sex trafficking victims, who frequent local fast food and convenient stores to train employees to recognize the signs and then have a procedure to get someone to come and work with the victim. We are training these non-professionals not to interfere but to recognize the signs. And then tweaking the already existing effective protocol we already have when a victim is found to account for those special circumstances. So, were working on developing that program now. Ft. Myers, FL In Salt Lake City, Utah, participants talked about the loss of funding from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the impact that has had on the day-to-day operations of their agency. 40

Participant: Our fund is USCRI. They can only do funding for foreign born, but that is all of our funding is from USCRI. Facilitator: Is that renewed annually? Participant: Yes, we renew with a MOU. I think they have the funding for four years. We are just a year in, so we have three more years of the. It used to be USCCB. We worked with them for about a year and then transferred to USCRI. We will be three more years and then who knows. Facilitator: Why did you have that transfer from USCCB to USCRI? Participant: [USCCB], they didnt get the funding, which they were amazing to work with. I loved it! I was sad to see that change, but we are easing in. We are getting it; it was a big change. They do services for twenty-six states, I think, and we are a part of that. It was a big transfer. It is getting underway now. Facilitator: Can you talk about the differences between working with both organizations? Maybe start with USCCB and how it changed. Participant: Most of the differences were administration-based. Client services stayed the same and how you administer client services. Most of the changes were administration and paperwork, going from these forms to these forms. The changes involved ways that they administer the program as far as training, and conference calls, and chain of command. USCCB had this great online reporting program that was really nice to use. Now we have forms to fill out and send it in. I like paper forms, it was organized for me. It was easy to see. Everyone had a case online. It was a big system that we used. Its more how your organization wants to do it. We came up with our own system of keeping track. As far a client services it is the same. Salt Lake City, UT Some participants mentioned the specific funding problems they are facing. These problems relate to the amount of resources necessary to apply for funding from some sources. As a result, in some places, the level of support and services for victims of human trafficking has had to be curtailed. Another issue is that the necessary services are not housed in one clearinghouse; rather, each service provider is one stop on the patchwork quilt of available resources. This can make coordinating care a difficult task. Participant: The issue that we see with federal money that trickles down, were a small organization, very sexual assault focused, and theres been a lot of RFPs out, especially from OVW [Department of Justice Office on Violence against Women] that has sexual assault somewhere in the title, but were just too small to go for that money. So the sexual assault, the money that is earmarked for sexual violence goes to big initiatives and big organizations, which we are struggling with hugely and were really hoping there can be some advocacy for the fact that this is the work we do and we should get some of the funding. Facilitator: So if you dont have the staff to go after the RFPs, is that what youre saying? Participant: The staff, often the collaboration, huge efforts to collaborate for those grants Cleveland, OH 41

Participant: We have other creative funding streams to provide administratively for one person to do full-time work and to allow other people in their current jobs to do this work. But the direct money to go to victims, which is crucial because they have no other access to assistance, is almost completely lacking. Its vital. I dont think you can provide a good, best practice anti-trafficking program with services to victims if you dont have the administrative piece in other words, people with the time and the staffing to do the work, the case management piece and the direct services resource money for the victims. You cant have one and not the other and have a successful program; you really have to have both or youre doing a disservice to the work and to the victim. Louisville Participant: I feel like sometimes we make ten phone calls to folks, where it would be so much more convenient and efficient, especially for the victim, to find it all in one spot, but we just dont have that liberty or that luxury here. So we call ten people to have something done by ten different people because we dont have other means to do it. Youll use the local food bank because they can get service, even if theyre undocumented. So someone will call that service and then maybe someone does have a food card that you can use. Then you get an immigration attorney in a different place. Then you get a therapist somewhere else because they have funding for that specific piece of therapy. So you are calling ten or fifteen people, where, obviously, it would be much more convenient and efficient if you could provide it in one place. Under rescue and restore, we do a little bit better, but were never able to do all of that. Theres not a one-stop shop in Kentucky for a trafficking victim. The closest thing you have is Catholic Charities, but its not close enough. Louisville, KY Participant: I would say weve done a pretty decent job with keeping up with most of the services but there is no denying that that loss of funding has impacted greatly staff not just the staff but the availability of services. Say before we could assist 13 clients with rent, immigration, transportation, or what not now we can only do it for three. Facilitator: I see. So its the same type of services but fewer clients. Participant: and we have to depend on others. Participant: Right, so whereas before we could focus on a few different areas that we could also provide the same services now, I find myself having to be much more creative not just with the partnerships but getting the client to be more self-sufficient on their own, which I guess is a good thing, such as instead of transporting them here to here and there, we have to say you need to get to these appointments and Im sorry theres nothing else we can do. And that is what the loss of funding has impacted. The services are still there but Participant: the quality of services is not there anymore as it used to be. Clients have to wait more; we have to send them to appointments on their own. There are a lot more little things that we are not able to do anymore. Ft. Myers, FL

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One Case Study, included below, illustrates the creative ways that funding must be used in order to support victims of human trafficking. In this scenario, the participant outlines the first steps taken in order to ensure that the victim is eligible for trafficking victims funding. Then, the victim is moved through an intricate funding web in order to secure appropriate services and treatment. Participant: My experience with the funding: when we ran the human trafficking program we had OVC funding, we had private funding. The non-profit had some private funding. At one point when we had so many clients, we also contracted with USCCB. So we had three different types of funding. We also had [another participants organization] when we were dying. I would say that OVC funding was the best funding that we had. Thats what [a local provider] is applying for. They changed it to include U.S. born so they are going to be able to access the funds. The USCCB funding was great also, but they have a cap and a lot of limitations. When you are working with victims of human trafficking, they may not fit a category or they are too complicated cases. So we would have to resort to private funding. The first thing we would do upon reception of a client was work with law enforcement aggressively to obtain CP, continuing persons. Without CP you just have to stand still. We usually try to do CP in the first week and we have to work hard pushing our law enforcement people. But it finally got to that point where we could get CP in less than two weeks. So we only had to tap into some money from OVC during that time before we got CP. We have this person but they are not CP yet, and if they say go ahead and open their funds. For the [client cases] that we just couldnt fund through OVC, we would seek private donations or go to [another participants organization]. The same agency that we were running the program, we also had VOCA funding for victims of crime. They are limited also in what we could use the money for. So we have to be careful in supplanting from other grants. I would say we had the OVC, the USCCB, the VOCA and the VAWA and private funding. So we had five we could tap into, but it was very difficult. For the type of work, I think the OVC model, dealing with all those cases that we have dealt with, their money, was the best model, with less restrictions on what you could do. If you followed the guidelines and if it was something that didnt fit, you were fine. Thats why I think when the task force asked me what funding they should go with I said the OVC and that is what they applied for. So hopefully they will get it. Once they are providing direct services in house you do not have to beg for much more service outside. Salt Lake City, UT

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Collaborative Partnerships
In the next section of the focus group, participants were asked about collaborations with other agencies and groups for providing services to victims of human trafficking. Some mentioned working with law enforcement officials in the area. Others talked about how challenging such collaborations can be. One consistent narrative collected at the focus groups was the history of any long-standing collaborative partnerships within an area.
Other than sending and receiving referrals, what agencies, groups, or individuals do you collaborate with in providing services to victims of human trafficking? Is your collaboration mostly on a local level, state level, federal government, other national level, or international level? What do you find most helpful about collaborating with others? Most challenging? What would help facilitate collaboration among agencies providing services to victims?

Some focus groups highlighted the collaboration between service providers and law enforcement officers. In some places, this relationship is specifically nurtured, while in others, it has been built out of necessity to handle the human trafficking cases in the area. Participant: We work with lots of different law enforcement, legal. If we find a layer to take a pro-bono case, we are working with them. Its always changing [I]t is whoever based on your client and what they need; thats the avenue you take. You try to find someone in this area, someone in that area. Salt Lake City, UT Participant: We try to use local law enforcement. We try to use the most local attorneys that we have. We use the most local direct service providers for food and other necessities. In trafficking cases, sometimes, you do have a need to move [the victim], sometimes for safety reasons. Sometimes, it is for service reasons because those services exist better in another community. So sometimes we collaborate on a state-wide level just to make sure we provide the best possible services for that particular case. The federal collaborations tend to exist more on the law enforcement side; we do have certain federal law enforcement or immigration things that go through the federal level. Even funding and training; the way that we get our training is largely at the federal level from folks who do this nationally because they are on the cutting edge. They can provide that service to us. Our personnel training comes to us from those folks at the federal level. Locally is more convenient in most cases, for the victim and for the service provider, but we, out of necessity, often need to collaborate with state-level folks or even federal folks. Louisville, KY

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One area that was specifically asked about was the history of any longstanding collaborative partners. For each of the focus groups, their backstory is presented below: Cleveland: Participant: What happened is in 2007, 2006/7, a number of us heard about human trafficking and we knew it was tied in. Actually, there is a long history, but anyway once we heard it, we followed up on it. In large part it was members of different religious communities, and in those days people didnt collaborate. This group did this, this had these high schools, this had this college, and they were busy and people just did their thing. So the collaborative, we thought it was collaborative to do this thing and there were other professionals in the group. So in the group there were lawyers, health care educators, social workers, and it worked well. But we saw very quickly, while that rooted the group, it has to collaborate with law enforcement, prosecution, all kinds of social service agencies, so as part of that, the collaborative had been working with the Rape Crisis Center and with housing because everywhere you went you heard there are no housing or services for minor victims. So we interviewed probably most people around the table and began to say well [Participants name] I remember had, because she works with minors, had a lot of ideas we learned a lot and we built a network that, when in doubt, at any time in the morning, you can call the people around this table and say help! which is what happens. I dont know what to do, you know what to do. Wed like to get that more systemic, so were getting there because the Rape Crisis Center has kind of articulated what theyve been doing because we know its not an easy problem. None of this is new, we gave it a new name and its like oh wow, there are trafficked survivors in every system and thats why we sort of dont want to do an isolated thing, we wanted to permeate everything, but if that helps with the collaborative, so we have a housing and services group that is trying to do the housing services piece, we have an education committee thats trying to get into the curriculum law, medicine, social work, so we are not just doing little CLEs after the fact. We are also trying to get it into high schools and grade schools. This has got to get into their social studies its got to permeate everything. Participant: One thing that kind of sparked my memory from what [Participants name] said is that several years ago, the collaborative worked with some high schools and one of them was the high school out in Youngstown; Magnificat here, and a lot of different schools. I remember I was out thereand the kids actually put together their own day long program and had followed up about what the school was going to do to raise awareness. And actually, I think it was the program that was held herewhere the students came originally and then they came back and created their own programs. I think [Participants name] or someone at the collaborative had a teenage girl come up and say we think we know someone, one of our friends or some of the kids in school, who might be victims, so thats another piece to this where the kids are actually identifying victims and are trying to get them help Participant: that benefit of awareness, trying to get that education piece. Facilitator: So the collaborative, it sounds like, is sort of like an umbrella, is that right? That sort of brings organizations and people together around this topic? Like what you were saying its not a direct service necessarily, its more of a

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Participant: Its more education and when we started there was no state law. So we were always calling [Participants name] and saying what do we do?! Since we have a new US attorney and a new FBI and theyre really moving the issue, so the collaboration, the cooperation, the attention to the issue is a priority in Northern Ohio. Cleveland, OH

Ft. Myers: Participant: I hate to sound arrogant about this but there are not that many resources that arent available in Southwest Florida and we have a very strong collaboration among our agencies. If I need shelter for a minor I can call another agency. If I need shelter for an adult, I call someone else. If I need help with transportation or a specific service, I call another agency. If I need to networktheres always a service available. Now I know each agency has their own difficulties, but really just with these agencies here at the table now you have a lot of needs covered right here. Law enforcement officers can call with a new case and we can really through our network find each part that is missing. So, Im not saying that there arent any gaps, but there is a very strong collaboration that is pretty effective. I havent had a single issue come up with a client that I havent been able to call somebody here. Participant: [The year] 2004 was when we had the idea to be organized and we started to get organized in 2005. We had our first task force meeting and it has not been a straight line up since then. On the other hand, there has been a lot of change in personnel, law enforcement, even in the U.S. attorneys office and loss of grants as well. But I think the thing that is definitive around here is the level of awareness in the public the newspapers are committed to covering events weve had a continuing emphasis on doing trainings and bringing in speakers and resources and it has been going on for a long time. You could say that that is not related to services, but if we hadnt created a network we wouldnt have the services. Facilitator: So was there an event that sparked this idea? Participant: The task force started because a womens club, of which I was a member, was inspired by the issue of human trafficking and we decided that we would ask the Sheriff if he would form a task force. Another county had gotten a federal grant and we knew that was a good way to entice him to do it. He jumped in and started and said yes, well have a meeting and we will have commitment from the U.S. attorneys office the US attorneys office was involved and the local and some federal law enforcement and some of the service agencies. As a result of that first meeting and this is the part that is highly unusual you always want to guarantee that someone at that meeting will give information that will lead to helping a victim and getting law enforcement to get information that will result in the arrest of traffickers and sent to federal prison. Well that never happens, but that did happen to us and that catapulted us into action. We had a conference, which was one of the first human trafficking conferences in the country, and it has continued. More and more agencies have gotten involved in helping and they are not always the same agencies but we have a core group of people that work on this now and its been effective. Ft. Myers, FL

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Salt Lake City: Participant: When it was the trafficking it has changed a little now because Im with the city, and our focus is not human trafficking. But I am making it now; Im bringing it in. Before, we had to have collaborative partners because one agency cant do everything thats impossible to do the wrap-around services, the intense case management, to running around everything. So in our model, I would call [another participant] was my last call when we couldnt get the funds, even though OVC funding allowed payments for some things, but not all things. So I would come to [that persons organization] for money I never get enough. (Laughter) It was right away that is who you call. Thats who takes on beginning services. We may be able to help in other things, but that she was limited to. We can also come in and do that. With the Asian Association we had cases before; we had a group case about sixty-something men. The Asian Association stepped in to take a couple of the cases to help our agency, because there was no way that we could this. It was just too many people, and not everyone has the capacity to take sixty. I couldnt come to CC and say here is sixty, or Asian Association, here is sixty. It had to be split up. It was difficult. I think, at least the model in place before, has been really good to be able to work with each other to call to say, Hey I need this, or I need that, or I need to plan this. Do you remember when the Thai case, there was so much work to be done. We would just have huge meetings and call everyone to the table, so that we would have department of workforce services, resettlement agencies, unaccompanied minor program, everyone said it was one big meeting for everyone. We had a lot of translators, just to trying to get everything instead of little groups because it was going to be a lot of people. Facilitator: So what it sounds like, its not necessarily that there is some long standing formal structure, but that you come together as needed. Is that fair? Participant: Yes, we know who serves who, age-wise, depending on what status the client has. You start from point A and figure out whom to go through to get to point B. Participant: When [another participant] ran or facilitated the task force group that was really helpful. Thats where I met the other partners and what resources they provide. That was really helpful. Facilitator: Is that ongoing? Participant: We had a subcommittee for service providers our agency along with the agencies that were funded together for the pilot program. UHHR that was the non-profit agency that received the funds for direct services and the BJA task force which was the law enforcement that was different agencies, but the U.S. attorney was head of it. However, Salt Lake City police was hosting it. With that we would have a subcommittee for victim providers for service providers; and service providers would come to that meeting to learn about each other. If I was to call you what can you do this can you do that they would try to set up services. Facilitator: Is that still happening? Participant: It died down once the funding ended, at least for my agency. The funding wasnt planned, so we didnt have time to prepare for anything. And without funds its harder there is no one taking charge of it. Right now the Attorney Generals office picked it up, again. South Valley agreed to be the service provider. The NGO we have applied four weeks ago. I helped them write the grant for the service model. They have submitted and now we are just waiting to hear from Washington, DC, the Department of Justice and see if it gets funded again. If the project does then the service piece will be 47

coming from South Valley and the law enforcement piece is the Attorney Generals. They have some task force meeting it is mostly for right now they are trying to get people to say more that we are going to have a task force. If it is funded, people will start being formally invited, and MOUs (Memorandum of Understanding) will be signed with service providers with law enforcement and with everybody that is going to provide services. We will have subcommittees, and people can attend the one best for them to attend. Salt Lake City, UT

Louisville: Participant: Maybe you want to hear a bit that will help you to understand how we grew. My position, which started as a fellowship, was as an immigration attorney, and then I was doing primarily VAWA immigration, some trafficking cases, and some training. A colleague of mine, another immigration attorney, and I always wanted to start a trafficking task force, but we didnt; the case load was too high. I moved to the state, got rid of the direct service component, and helped start the first task force in Lexington. That was not funded, but it was funded in a sense by having a staff person who could organize it. The VAWA funding that I got helped fund that task force. Out of that, we got connections to get a study done pro-bono by University of Kentucky to document it. We got a state law passed. The funding that I got through the state enabled me to do that. I could make connections with University of Kentucky to do that. That was the funding the little bit that had somebody with freed-up time. At the time, Catholic Charities and other groups went for that federal grant. Facilitator: This was in 2008? Participant: Yes. We applied for it in 2007. At that point we had a Louisville task force. My funding at my job allowed me to help provide support and run those meetings, too. Thats the first bit of funding we got, but it wasnt for direct services. So thats the history of it. But funding was critical being able to have somebody who was freed-up to do that task force development. Again, those task forces that weve had have never had separate funding of their own. So the training we do is through our grants, and we do a lot of training. We do four law enforcement trainings a year that are two and a half days on trafficking Participant: Our statistics show that, over the past five years since 2008, we trained more than 16,000 people in Kentucky on trafficking and thats probably conservative because were very careful with that data. Participant: And some of that is professional training that were doing for free, like the police training; were trainers for their academy, but were not getting paid for it. The fact is that we get some money in our jobs, so thats how the dollars have worked. Participant: Right now, we have five or so pretty active task forces in the state, and they are very localized efforts Louisville, Lexington, Northern Kentucky, Bardstown, and Moorhead. These task forces are not funded; except that we have a new one in Bardstown that now has funding. The funding is through CHI, Catholic Health Initiative. Folks in Bardstown who started this effort, in conjunction with the larger statewide coalition, decided to go for some money to do local training and prevention awareness efforts, and so they got $25,000 to fund this effort in Bardstown. Its the first task force 48

in Kentucky that is trafficking specific that has had funding specific to the larger task force that they can use. Its not for direct services; its only for prevention, training, and education, so it is very specific, but it is really good funding for a task force effort like that because largely what our task forces do is spearhead outreach, awareness, and education. It also does help victims services because you get all the victims services folks at the table and you talk about cases and make sure theres a collaboration of services. Facilitator: You can network and get to know each other. Participant: Exactly, but the only funding associated with any task force apart from the staff who are able to participate is that Bardstown task force and that is private funding through CHI. Louisville, KY

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Trainings
In the next part of the focus groups, a number of questions about trainings were asked of participants. In this case, responses usually mentioned either helpful trainings they had attended or talked about trainings they had facilitated.
What types of training have you/your agency/organization found most helpful in providing services to trafficking victims? What conferences, classes, workshops, or other forums have you attended that have been especially helpful in working with these victims? What did you find most helpful? How could they be improved? What types of additional training would be helpful?

Participants mentioned a number of trainings that they have attended that have been helpful in their work with victims of human trafficking. Where these trainings were listed by name, they have been included below. Participant: I think the great thing about Freedom Network is you really have those folks whose work is human trafficking in some specific way. You have the folks who are the most knowledgeable in those key areas. So if youre an attorney, you can talk to the people at the national level who know the most about T-visas and U-visas and USCIS processing and all of those things and you can talk directly to them afterwards and ask them specific questions about specific things that no one else can answer specifically. Someone can say to you that maybe this is right, but, when you go to Freedom Network, you can meet those people and talk directly to them. I have found so many times when its helpful later when something comes up on a case, I then know the people who I would go to because I sat in on a training or I, at very least, saw them on the agenda. [With training,] if we can get it from those folks who are most knowledgeable because of their specific focus on trafficking, its vital. Here in Kentucky, were just starting to scratch the surface of what can be done in the civil realm for trafficking victims. So were just scratching the surface of that there are all these ways civilly that trafficking victims can get some resources that they rightfully have access to. Its people at the federal level for the most part who have this knowledge and resources to help us. Given that Kentucky is largely rural and not always on the national map, we must go to you. So if we go to you at the federal level Freedom Network seems the best place to congregate all trafficking At other conferences at the federal level, maybe its only focusing on the sex industry or only on labor stuff or only focusing on in general lots of immigration things, but Freedom Network is all trafficking, all these different realms. Its fantastic. Louisville, KY Participant: Another good, free source of training that Ive liked recently has been the National Center for Missing and Exploited Kids. Theyve had a really good series on domestic trafficked kids. Thats been a really good use of webinar-type training. I would say that more specific issue has been good. Not just on trafficking, but on these very 50

concrete sub-populations. LGBT youth; that training on that. The stuff thats highly specialized at this point is most helpful. Participant: For me, as a non-legal person, a great little resource has been CLINIC because, again, I cant speak as an attorney ever, but its helpful to inform me so I know where, how, and when to send clients places to get these very good answers from folks at CLINIC who do this trafficking work and are so knowledgeable. For instance, when we had he USCCB per capita contract, USCCB had a contract attorney working with them. That person was someone that they contracted with that I could call myself and say, I have a legal question, and they would always know the answer. And thats a great resource for me. Facilitator: And CLINIC seems to not get too weighed-down in legal-speak. Participant: I know they made it easily understandable for a lay person like me. I dont know how much they dumbed it down for me, but I was able to understand it. Louisville, KY

Participant: From the legal immigration perspective, there have been many trainings and webinars from CLINIC, the Catholic-Cleveland immigration network and IEN I forget what the stands for which CLINIC is a part of, so it reaches more people and theyve had several more than several trainings on the T-visas and how to go about that on a legal level. Also, with Catholic Charities USA, they have trainings on how to identify victims. I think more could be done on that because that was a while ago, a couple of years, if not longer. From the social service perspective too, what to give to social workers if they find victims I remember those webinars, maybe four or five years ago, I havent seen anything like that come up in the last several years. I think that what be helpful to help people respond. Participant: The best training that Ive ever experienced is the one you guys provided and that was when I was in law school! At the time, I was a law student and that was the first time I was able to learn about human trafficking. That was the first time I learned that Toledo is one of the biggest the area with the biggest issue of human trafficking, so I was able to learn about the topics and that got this relationship developed and I was able to, after I got a job and being in a practiceit is very valuable, I think training, providing training and education in law school, or in any school setting, I think that would be a really wonderful opportunity for the people to learn about this. Cleveland, OH Participant: The trainings I attended in DC when we have the OVC funding. We did some immersion training with different task forces. We got to travel with different task forces that were already established to see their model. In Florida we saw three or four. We picked states that were similar in the cases see in Utah with Labor as our highest. Texas and some other states (are similar to Utah). They were hands on. We were going out with them to places working cases. It was really intensive training. Those were for me the most beneficial. Salt Lake City, UT

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Participant: Going right back to the point on OVC and I dont consider myself an expert by any means, but when I started out, I had no clue what trafficking was and Ive gone to trainings that were run by joint law enforcement and services providers task forces which really opens your eyes in terms of collaborating with the law enforcement agency. Ive gone to trainings that are just focused on different types of trafficking, all those kinds of things. Its nice to go to an all-day seminar and hear about, you know, Trafficking 101, but I think what really gets you are those trainings by people who have experience in whatever branch it is, law enforcement, NGO, or whatever, that can really give you kind of a concrete grasp on identifying, on necessary services. Like I said, the two biggest things when it comes to trafficking are identification and collaboration and the trainings that focus on that are the ones that really get you going. Ft. Myers, FL Some participants talked about the trainings that they or their agency have provided. Most of these trainings targeted special populations, such as immigrant communities, health care providers, and law enforcement. Participant: One of the huge needs that I see in the immigrant community, especially in the Hispanic and Asian languages well, I guess it depends on what area youre in, but we need trainings in those languages, people who can go into those communities and train there because were not reaching the communities that are most at risk, as far as the immigrant community goes. As far as the undocumented community goes, because they are mixed, we dont go up to people and ask whats your status people are afraid to come forward to attend meetings if its like an immigration kind of thing, but for the human trafficking and the safety-kind of issues, people really need to hear it. We just cant make any kind of headway without someone who is known to the community who speaks the language and can go and do the presentations. We offer, offer, offer, and the only people we can get to are the English-speakers. We do have a bilingual person, but hes Anglo, hes not going to work. Cleveland, OH Participant: Right now, I present to the nurses at Lorraine Community College, to their associate degree nursing program, so I present to them on forensic nursing and human trafficking as well Were getting into the ERs Ive done all the ERs in Lorraine county, theres not that many, only six. Because the turnover is so high, I go to them periodically and update and stuff like that. I think that, with human trafficking, the medical portion of it has not really until lately been a big thought. So when I came into it a few years ago and, being a nurse, that was my goal and Ive really stuck my nose into everything just to make the point of the medical portion of it because it is so important. In Lorraine County, the way we are finding victims is through the sexual assault unit. Theyre getting the forensic medical evaluation and then because I am in the medical field I am a nurse I have that advocacy role as well for the patient, I get on their level and talk to them and I get a lot of disclosure about things that have happened Cleveland, OH

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Participant: I think training is severely lacking in the law enforcement, local level. Some of it was supposed to have been the priority of the Ohio Highway Control and they just havent expanded, so weve got prosecutors, police officials, and victims advocates that dont understand what they are really looking at and theyre thinking well this is a child prostitute and not looking to see whats really been manifesting and what services are truly needed. Cleveland, OH A few participants talked about the impediments to training that their agency is facing. The number one impediment to offering or attending more training is a lack of funding. Participant: Even to just invite people to say you are the expert for minors, you are the expert for sexwhen we want to pull people together; its time out from what they are doing. So its funding, funding, funding. Cleveland, OH Participant: To many people you have to explain. It sounds like we need more training. We just dont have the funding. How many years ago was that? Participant: We did it in 2006 and 2007 Participant: You have to keep up and there is no one doing that anymore. Staff changes, mission statements change, and everyone needs to be retrained. Salt Lake City, UT Participant: It is also very hard because of the relationship between training outreach and services. We get calls all the time to do trainings because its the hot topic, and were doing all this training that is also professional training. There is that sort-of awareness raising for church or college or something, but then theres police training, and its this balance because, a month ago, we didnt know if we would have [the coordinator for trafficking victims services] at all. So were still doing training with police and the balance with saying, Were doing all this training, and this is what you should do. This is how to screen, identify, etc. We want to ensure that the services are there. In addition to what you can only do with the funding once you get it, we are doing this dance back and forth of how much do we raise awareness of this and do the training, when you may or may not have the stable services. We happen to have some great advocates around the state doing a great job, but we need a more sustainable victims service model so that, as we do this training and get more calls, were equipped to deal with them. Louisville, KY Some participants mentioned the additional training and resources that their agency needs. A few mentioned wanting to be trained on the most up-to-date methods of screening and providing services for victims of trafficking. Others mentioned training that was more specifically geared to the types of victims and issues that their particular agency faces. Still a few others talked about the kinds of trainings they would like to offer to the community. Participant: I think there would be a couple of other gaps that would be great to see [filled] specific support groups for trafficking survivors, both labor and sex, and some 53

peer leadership efforts. Like if you think in the health promoter context like public health has a great model you train a group of individuals who are key people in their community and they train other folks. I think that would be really helpful. It seems to be a really effective best-practice nationally for working with trafficked kids. To have older women, who have survived and escaped and can connect, co-training with a mental health person I think those are two concrete things that would be really nice things to have that are gaps right now. Louisville, KY Participant: [I want] trainings on how to, you know, just show us whats new in trafficking, nation-wide, globally, state-widewhats happening, what are the techniques, whats going on with forensic interviewing.? Participant: Id like a profile for that. Participant: Yes, whats going on with new task forces being developed, what are the trends in the victims and the victim population, is domestic minor sex trafficking on the rise or is it just in big cities? Stuff like that. Participant: housing resources, funding resources, all of those things. Facilitator: So both hands-on and sort of the day-to-day running, how to keep your engine running I suppose. What else? Participant: Even little tips on grant writing, specifically for these services, just to make it better. Participant: How to build task forces Participant: Sharing of existing resources that other groups have already developed so that we dont have to constantly developing on our own. Participant: No developing the wheel again if theyve got it, you know. Ft. Myers, FL Participant: But we are not there yet and people are working at it but there is no funding for that kind of stuff. You know, the expertise around this table is huge and I just would want to fund everybody because everybody brings a different piece. When I hear you talking about a new approach Participant: I want to train with it because were challenged, here we are trying to talk to someone who we understand is in a situation and they are looking for an off-the-shelf solution. You cant just buy this at K-mart or Target; we have all this to work out Participant: Well, you know there are a set of best practices. This one worked with you, this one worked with you, and its not one and thats what funders look for sometimes. Whats the answer? Well, you know, theres no one right answer! Thats lots of answers and its very difficult to communicate that. Cleveland, OH Participant: [T]wo other things come up with training and thats the appropriate kind of training for the organization and thats dealing with the client, what are they doing with the client and the appropriate kind of training for what they are doing... Then you also run into the maintenance of training, are they being re-trained, things are changing, do they know the new things that they need to know? Whats happening now that isnt happening anymore that you dont need to be worrying about anymore, dont waste any more time 54

on it. Thats something I see as a problem, they get trained one time and then they dont receive any more training and then they run into problems. Ft. Myers, FL One case study on training comes from the focus group at Ft. Myers, Florida. In this case, the network of service providers to victims of human trafficking have put together trainings for the community and for other providers to raise awareness about human trafficking and to make sure that the care being offered is sufficient. This has had a two-fold effect: it has raised awareness of the problem and it has created opportunities for further networking to better the services being offered. Participant: The OVC funding is very important for training. I think we have, to stay on this for a second, put on a few conferences that have been pretty helpful. Facilitator: What are these conferences for? Participant: We put them together as part of the coalition for the general community really Participant: Provider community really. Participant: They have been good in terms of getting people to hear about, like we had Special Agent Christopher do a presentation on domestic minor sex trafficking and its good to get people to hear about that now. There havent been in my opinion, much training for those of us who have been doing this for a while, give us new information. Its kind of us providing the people who dont know about trafficking some knowledge. Participant: Yes, and weve done a lot of community things to develop an understanding of trafficking, broadening. Tomorrow night we are doing an event thats not directly human trafficking and its bringing in speakers from literally from Nepal and Indonesia. Not because we are paying them, but because they happen to be friends with somebody I know, and we happen to have all the facilities given to us, so were going to have this event which will not teach you how to take care of a victim in Leigh county, but it will broaden everybodys images and feelings and understanding, including the communitys. So, you know, weve been able to do a lot of that, but again its all been without that additional stuff and, youre absolutely right, going to those OVC conferences were absolutely fabulous and it was, as conferences usually are, in the networking at least as important as the content... Ft. Myers, FL

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Final Thoughts
Finally, participants were given one last chance to mention anything that had not been covered to this point in the focus group.
What else do agencies/organizations need to do a better job of providing services to trafficking victims? What resources would help (staff, facilities, funding, etc.)? What new services or programs would help? What formal protocols or procedures for dealing with victims of trafficking would help? Does anyone have anything they would like to add?

At this point in the focus group, three additional themes came out the need for more research, more shelters or housing, and more funding. Participant: We need research and data because thats what people want to see. When we talk to folks, especially professionals like law enforcement, they want to see your numbers. They want to know how often its happening. I dont think we can really say [in part because] the programs are so new and we cant answer all those questions. But whatever we can give folks that show in a very specific way that is not just made up, that is research, is factual is very helpful. So any research that can be done So many research opportunities exclude rural areas like ours. We only have, to my knowledge, one study that was done here at the University of Kentucky in 06/07 that looks at the whole issue of trafficking in Kentucky and it doesnt scratch the surface. But that has been vital; weve used that information again and again and again. Thats not enough. We want to be in the national dialogue about research and data. And I think Kentucky is somewhat unique because we are more rural and maybe smaller and everyone largely knows everyone we network so much weve been able to keep fairly good data about what we have seen and how it looks and I dont think thats true for every state. Maybe its true for one city, like a very large urban area in another state, but, in Kentucky, we do have this great data, but thats also limited. Its only the cases that have been sent to us; it doesnt include everybody. So this research component is vital. We must have research that includes Kentucky and looks at the issue here because we already know that were not exempt from this problem of trafficking, and we want to know more about what it looks like. We want to be in the dialogue on paper so others can know and I think it will help funding. It will help fill the gaps; it will help in so many ways. Louisville, KY Participant: I would like to see some funding for follow up and see some research on how people are doing after they receive the services. We inadvertently hear some news afterwards, sometimes its positive, sometimes its not so positive, some people revert to prostitution and our having problems despite everything. So Id like to see some followup or some research to see if there are any trends or anything that we could predict and plan for them, discharge planning... Also, Id like to see something thats there for people 56

to go to after they are released from the program, after they graduate so to speak from the service. Ft. Myers, FL Participant: Regionally, in the south there is a dearth of shelters. If you look regionally, the south is a region, and a lot of our cases are like that. Two other things I would point to: We need a change in the federal law on child welfare. Theres no federal law that says you cant lock-up kids for bring trafficked. Its a big gap. The federal government does legislate a lot of child welfare, and theres a big gap in this area. Even if you look at the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) If a foreign-national kid is identified, theres a way to spring them out of detention, and it says they should be detained in a police-restrictive area and go into foster care. Theres no such provision for U.S. kids. Thats a major issue. So a lot of states, including Kentucky, are trying to push for safe harbor to set that up, but thats a gap at the federal level. If the Feds say it, the states will have to follow. We need reauthorization of TVPA and VAWA to guarantee these protections. One little gap, too, thats not an insignificant one, is that a lot of trafficking victims have messy lives. Right now, this is a little issue in the immigration law, but the ground of inadmissibility if youve been in prostitution; you can be denied a visa, and its an antiquated provision. If you look at the history, its from the 1900s when they wanted to keep out women with bad morals. so its this antiquated thing, but its a problem for our clients who might relapse and be out on the street even after they get a visa, or theyve had an issue. So thats one gap. Those are two legal gaps, but I think the law is really, really important because it does dictate policy. It dictates where funding goes. Those are two pretty big gaps right now. Louisville, KY Participant: One of the gaps I remember dealing with teens, US born teens, and the lack of ability to find shelter space available. There is a local nonprofit that wont take kids over a certain age and the shelters wouldnt take kids because they dont have a guardian and are under 18. They are dangerous in a domestic violence shelter, because they are of a certain age or maybe insurance reasons. Housing across the board is bad but it gets especially bad across groups. Salt Lake City, UT Participant: We just need the money. (Laughter) Just give us the money. Salt Lake City, UT Participant: We need more money for services, for staff. For example, as [another participant] alluded to earlier, we do have these two big funding streams at the federal level the DOJ stream and the HHS stream. I dont know that thats enough. Theres the NIJ stream for research, but I dont know if thats enough to provide all the needs in trafficking because it is so multifaceted and includes so many professionals. And, at the federal level, I know that it has been officially approved to fund domestic victims, but that money has never been allocated and that is hugely problematic that theres not federal money in many cases. Through DOJ, theres limited money for domestic victims, but HHS is all limited to foreign nationals. Its hugely problematic because, at least here, 57

we know that its almost 50/50 at least it has been in most of our cases. We need the same access to services for all victims. We need the funding to be less restrictive or less victim-specific so its no such a patch-work. and so its more accessible to rural areas because, so far, funding has largely not been accessible to us. Facilitator: Anything else anyone wants to say? Participant: Did I mention that we need money?! Louisville, KY

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Appendix I: Questionnaire with Response Frequencies

Catholic Charities USA Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate


Survey of Providers of Service to Victims of Trafficking
The survey below was distributed to 48 CCUSA member agencies identified as providing services to victims of trafficking. After initial distribution, 8 agencies were excluded as being out of scope, since they no longer provided such services. In all, there were 29 agencies that completed the survey, for a 72 percent response rate. Below are the percentage responses for each item, calculated out of 100 percent, as well as the percentage of all respondents that did not respond to that question, separately calculated out of 100 percent for clarity of comparison (marked NR for non-response).
NOTE: All respondents with a response to Q3 that was greater than 0 (79 percent) responded to some of Q4 Q15. If respondents entered numbers greater than 0 in some of Q4 Q15, but left others blank, those entries that were left blank were replaced with a 0. If respondents entered 0 to Q3, their responses to Q4 Q15 were not considered. 1. In what year did your agency begin providing services to victims of human trafficking? NR = 0 Year: ___Mean = 2006___ NR Mean 07 29 2. Total number of trafficked persons ever served by your agency. 03 09 3. Total number of trafficked persons served in the last 12 months (or the most recent 12-month period for which you have accessible data). From the total number reported in item 3, above, how many of these trafficked persons were: NR Mean Gender and Age 21 04 4. Adult males 21 04 5. Adult females 21 02 6. Children (under age 18) Nationality 21 01 7. U.S. citizens 21 09 8. Foreign nationals 21 00 9. Legal immigrants or permanent residents Immigration Status 21 05 10. Refugees/Asylees/Undocumented 21 02 11. T-Visa holders 21 00 12. U-Visa holders Trafficking Status 21 05 13. Labor trafficking victims 21 04 14. Sex trafficking victims Disposition 21 00 15. Not seen again after their initial visit 21 00 16. Eventually deported 21 01 17. Granted permanent resident status 21 07 18. Eventually legally employed 60 19. What was the total annual budget for trafficking services at your agency for FY 2011-2012? NR = 45 $ ___Mean = $40,391___

Which of the following are sources of funding for the annual budget for trafficking services at your agency for FY 2011-2012? (Please check all that apply). 17 20. Subsidy from your agency 45 21. Federal grants Please list grants received: _______________ 14 22. State grants Please list grants received:_________________ 10 23. Private donors 10 24. Private company and/or foundation grants Please list:____________ 14 25. Other sources: ___________________
26. Did your agency receive funds in 2011 from the USCCB as a subgrantee of the HHS/ORR Per Capita Victim Services Contract, first granted to the USCCB Migration and Refugee Services in 2006? NR = 14 44 1. Yes 56 2. No (skip to question 28) Mean = $20,262 27. If yes, how much did your agency receive from that office in 2011? NR = 69

Has your agency taken any of these measures in the last 12 months regarding services to trafficking victims? Yes No NR Yes No 21 26 74 28. Reduced the number of clients served 21 35 65 29. Cut back on services to clients 21 13 87 30. Reduced staff 14 48 52 31. Sought additional funding sources 24 14 86 32. Eliminated the trafficking program 79 33 67 33. Other:_____________________ Which of these has your agency done in the last 12 months? (Please check all that apply).

%
48 31 35 35 35 24 34. Given any talks or formal presentations to raise awareness about trafficking in your community 35. Advertised or run a publicity campaign about the services your agency offers 36. Lobbied or endorsed legislation about trafficking 37. Communicated with your legislator about trafficking 38. Provided training to law enforcement 39. Reached out to former victims of trafficking to engage in educating, lobbying, or publicity about your services 40. Formed or participated in a coalition 41. Worked with other service providers (name):________________________

NR 17 10 10 14 14 14 10 10 14 10 10 14 17 24 24 21 17 14 17 21 17

1 21 39 77 92 76 28 08 46 72 04 35 60 00 09 18 70 17 64 13 22 21

2 00 19 04 00 04 12 11 08 00 19 11 04 29 05 09 04 12 04 04 09 13

3 67 38 15 04 16 48 73 42 20 69 50 32 67 59 55 22 67 28 75 65 62

4 12 04 04 04 04 12 08 04 08 08 04 04 04 27 18 04 04 04 08 04 04

53. Guardianship 54. Housing/shelter 55. Immigration services 56. Information and referral 57. Interpreter or cultural liaison 58. Job training 59. Law enforcement 60. Legal services/advocacy 61. Life skills 62. Medical services 63. Mental health services 64. Outreach services 65. Protection/safety services 66. Repatriation services 67. Self-help groups 68. Social service coordination 69. Substance abuse 70. Transportation 71. Victim compensation 72. Victim impact statement 73. Victim/witness notification

Please use these responses for questions 74-89. 1 = Not at all 3 = Somewhat 4 = Very much 2 = Only a little How much does your agency need the following to help provide better services to trafficking victims? NR 1 2 3 4 14 16 16 28 40 74. More staff 21 48 22 21 9 75. New or additional facilities 07 07 00 26 67 76. Increased funding 10 15 12 38 35 77. New services or programs 14 08 28 24 40 78. Formal workshops/training 14 20 20 32 28 79. Formal protocols/procedures for working with victims How much are these a barrier or challenge to your agency in providing services to trafficking victims?

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Please use these responses for questions 42-73. 1 = We provide the service in-house 2 = We provide contract services through a collaborative partner 3 = We refer the client to another local agency 4 = There is no local provider for this service

NR 1 For each of the services listed below, how does your agency 10 27 ensure access for victims of trafficking? NR 1 2 3 4 07 04 10 38 23 35 04 42. Access to public benefits (i.e., 07 04 TANF) 07 19 10 04 08 84 04 43. Child care 10 27 10 50 12 34 04 44. Clothing 10 38 12 42 08 45. Counseling groups or support groups 07 63 14 56 00 40 04 46. Court orientation 10 38 08 42 12 47. Crisis intervention or hotline 10 46 14 08 12 68 12 48. Dental services 10 27 04 61 08 49. Education 07 52 14 52 08 32 08 50. Employment 07 48 14 48 12 36 04 51. Family counseling 93 50 10 62 08 27 04 52. Food 61

3 4

35 34 4 80. Difficulty coordinating with Federal agencies 00 44 52 81. Lack of adequate funding 04 44 48 82. Lack of adequate resources 26 44 11 83. Lack of adequate training 42 15 15 84. Lack of in-house protocols/procedures 22 11 04 85. Lack of knowledge about victims rights 27 27 00 86. Lack of support and isolation felt by service providers 22 19 07 87. Language barriers 37 11 04 88. Safety concerns 00 00 50 89. Other:________________

90. Based on your experience, what types of assistance do agencies such as yours need most to improve the services it provides to trafficking victims?

See pages 24-25 for responses.

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Appendix II: Focus Group Protocol

Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA)

Providers of Services to Victims of Trafficking


Focus Group Protocol
Introduction A focus group is a gathering of about 8-12 people for about an hour and a half to two hours to talk about a particular topic in some detail. A protocol, not a questionnaire, is used. The purpose of the protocol is to set out the major issues that the focus group is convened to address, including a variety of probes that the researcher may use as necessary. Unlike a questionnaire, a protocol is not followed rigorously. While survey research requires consistency every time an instrument is used, a focus group demands flexibility. Thus, not all the probes or other specific questions on a protocol are necessarily asked in a specific focus group experience. Rather, the protocol serves as a starting point for each focus group, and the experience of each focus group varies considerably depending on the issues and experiences surfaced in a particular group. In the protocol that follows, an asterisk appears next to those questions that CARA will make a special effort to ask at each focus group.

Advantages and Limitations Focus groups allow for:

$ $ $ $

An intensive understanding of a particular issue. A discovery of perspectives and ways of thinking not previously considered or known. Provide measures of frequency of certain attitudes, practices, or behaviors. Measure a particular set of characteristics in a population.

Focus groups do not:

Scientifically selected random sample surveys are best to fulfill those functions.

Timeline and Sites Selected for this Study CARA will conduct four focus groups for this study. CCUSA will make all arrangements for gathering participants for these focus groups. The focus groups will be composed primarily of service providers that participated in the survey distributed in the first part of this research.

The focus group participants will include:

$ $

Staff of selected Catholic Charities member agencies Other social service providers, both public and private
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$ $ $ $

Health care providers Law enforcement personnel Attorneys that represent trafficking victims Other stakeholders as CCUSA sees appropriate

Purpose The purpose of these focus groups is to bring together service providers working with victims of human trafficking to deepen our understanding of the services available for victims of trafficking and the challenges of providing services to this group. CARA is conducting these focus groups for Catholic Charities USA. Results will be used in designing advocacy, training, and other support services to help meet the needs of service providers who work with victims of trafficking. The focus will be on exploring the needs these service providers identify and the resources they would like to see developed to better meet those needs. The focus group protocol that follows is designed to learn the following:

$ $ $ $ $ $

Existing services and resources that are available to assist victims of human trafficking. The barriers an agency or a victim might face. The gaps in existing services that would better serve victims. Knowledge of service providers about the issues involved in human trafficking. Conferences, workshops, trainings, forums, etc. on human trafficking that have been helpful. Suggestions for resources, workshops, trainings, forums, etc. that could be helpful.

Procedure The focus group proceedings will be audio-taped, transcribed, and analyzed and the findings will be included in a final report to CCUSA. No participant will be identified in the transcripts or in the report of the findings. Any information in the discussion that could reveal the identity of an individual participant will be stripped from the transcripts and will not be included in any report of the findings. The final report will focus on patterns and commonalities in the discussions and will highlight representative comments.

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Meeting the Needs of Victims of Trafficking


Focus Group Protocol
Introductions and Brief Description of the Project 5 minutes Hello! My name is _______________. I am a researcher from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). CARA is a social scientific research center affiliated with Georgetown University that uses surveys and other social science methods to study Catholic populations and institutions. We have worked with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Catholic Educational Association, and, of course, extensively with Catholic Charities USA. You have been invited to this focus group today to discuss services your agency provides to victims of human trafficking. I anticipate this focus group will last between 90 minutes to two hours. We will cover a number of topics, all related to human trafficking. While I encourage your participation in this group, your participation is not required. At times, we may be talking about sensitive information; I ask that you be respectful and honest, and that whatever is said in this room remain in this room. I can assure you that no identifying information about you or your agency will be included in the results of this focus group. Any questions? Any concerns? In that case, lets jump right in! First, lets talk about the kinds of trafficking victims your agency offers services to: 1) What are the unique characteristics and needs of the victims of human trafficking that you/your agency/organization works with? 10 minutes *How do you/would you identify a client as a victim of trafficking? *How are their problems/needs similar to those of other crime victims? *How are they unique? What is your agencys greatest challenge in working with victims of human trafficking? How about a few questions on the services and programs you currently offer for victims of trafficking: 2) In your experience, how adequate are the services currently available to victims of trafficking? What gaps do you see? 20 minutes *What services are available in this area to victims of human trafficking? *What other services do you see a need for that are presently not being met by you or other service providers? Are there other services your agency would provide if you had more resources?

Continuing to think about additional resources 3) What are your agencys main sources of funding for programs for victims of trafficking? 20 minutes *How has this funding changed over time, particularly recently? *How have funding changes impacted your agencys ability to offer services? 66

*What has your agency done to make up for any changes in funding for services to victims of human trafficking, if anything? Now, a few questions on the ways that agencies sometimes work together: 4) Other than sending and receiving referrals, what agencies, groups, or individuals do you collaborate with in providing services to victims of human trafficking? 10 minutes *Is your collaboration mostly on a local level, state level, federal government, other national level, or international level? *What do you find most helpful about collaborating with others? Most challenging? *What would help facilitate collaboration among agencies providing services to victims? Lets think about trainings you or your agency has participated in with regard to providing services to victims of human trafficking: 5) What types of training have you/your agency/organization found most helpful in providing services to trafficking victims? 15 minutes *What conferences, classes, workshops, or other forums have you attended that have been especially helpful in working with these victims? *What did you find most helpful? How could they be improved? What types of additional training would be helpful? And, finally, this is your opportunity to say anything else that hasnt been mentioned yet. 6) What else do agencies/organizations need to do a better job of providing services to trafficking victims? 10 minutes *What resources would help (staff, facilities, funding, etc.)? *What new services or programs would help? *What formal protocols or procedures for dealing with victims of trafficking would help? Does anyone have anything they would like to add? Thank you so much for your participation today! If you think of something you would like to have included in todays conversation, please feel free to email me at: _____________. Thanks again for your time and your thoughtful responses!

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