Mayor’s Task Force on Anti-Human Trafficking

Child Sex Trafficking Committee Meeting Agenda

Wednesday, January 11^th, 2017 1:30 pm-3:00 pm

1254 Market Street, San Francisco, CA

 

 

Attendees:

Patricia Barragan – District Attorney Victim Services

Mollie Brown- Huckleberry Youth Programs

Karen Catalona- San Francisco District Attorney’s Office

Saerom Choi- API Legal Outreach

Kim Coats - San Francisco Unified School District – School Health Programs

Jennifer Daly - Legal Services for Children

Carly Devlin- Huckleberry Youth Services

Antonio Flores- Sergeant at SFPD Special Victims Unit

Sabrina Forte- Bay Area Legal Aid

Johanna Gendelman- Family and Children’s Services

Elise Hansell- Department on the Status of Women

Emily Hinsey- Love Never Fails

Carletta Jackson-Lane- Sojourner Truth FFA

Anna Jaeger – Caravan Studios

Minouche Kandel- Department on the Status of Women

Antonia Lavine- Jewish Coalition Against Human Trafficking

Rosalia Lopez – San Francisco Unified School District – School Health Programs

Rebecca Marus- Public Defenders Office

Maggie McHale- Department on the Status of Women

Elisabet Medina – San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center

JaMel Perkins – Freedom FWD

Christina Powers — San Francisco Public Defenders Office – Juvenile Division

Sheela Ramesh – Bay Area Legal Aid

Mel Siltanen - Young Women's Freedom Center

Emily Sims – RTI International

Alia Whitney-Johnson – Freedom FWD

 

I. Introductions/ Check-In / Shared Success

II. Update on HART

Carly Devlin presented updates on the Huckleberry Advocacy & Response Team’s (HART) work in the final quarter of 2016. HART works in collaboration with Children’s Protective Services, SFPD, the District Attorney’s Office, and the Probation Department to provide immediate crisis intervention and case management services for trafficked youth.

Between October 1- December 31, 2016, HART served 43 youth and handled 14 crisis calls. 90% of youth served continued to engage in services after their initial advocate meeting. They also received 21 referrals, mostly through Child Welfare.

HART has witnessed youth staying in services over a longer period, which is changing the way they are thinking about data. In the next quarter, HART will create a data system to track where the youth are and for how long in a more quantitative way. The team will also be working on capacity building through consulting community based organizations and social workers.

Carly highlighted some of the challenges youth are experiencing while working with HART, including:

• Finding viable placements, especially transition housing
• Receiving ongoing resources when not in a placement / AWOL
• Meeting what the youth defines as basic needs and safety to keep them engaged in the community – Carly highlighted that each youth defines this differently and that sometimes they require a small amount of resources to participate in community activities in a meaningful way. She advocated for looking into what it would take to get each youth’s needs met while simultaneously working to engage them in more formal systems.
• Frequent changes in youth’s social worker
• Quick shifts with foster placements without a sufficient acclimation period – Carly recommended some type of bridge program

Carly will share some stories of youth they have worked with at the next Committee meeting.

III. Update on Trafficking Prevention Curricula in Schools

Mollie Brown from Huckleberry Youth Programs gave an update on the pilot to introduce trafficking prevention curricula into San Francisco middle and high schools. For high school, Huckleberry developed two new units on human trafficking that integrate into the existing “Be Real. Be Ready.” curriculum. The additional units on human trafficking were piloted at Lincoln High School this December. There has been an unfunded mandate to provide human trafficking curriculum at the middle school level as well. However, there is no designated health class in San Francisco middle schools and there isn’t a uniform decision across all schools on who will be presenting the curriculum. A large focus of the curriculum will be about consent and about what authentic consent look like.

In the discussion that followed, committee members highlighted how many youth who are trafficked are 11 or 12 years old, and therefore how important the implementation of this curriculum in middle school curriculum will be. Tony Flores also suggested that we add the national human trafficking hotline number and the BEFREE text short code to the “Healthy Me” cards that are given to students. Emily Hinsley from Love Never Fails let the committee know that the PROTECT prevention curricula has been successfully piloted in 5 rural California counties this fall and will expand this spring. JaMel Perkins recommended that we look at what we can learn from how PROTECT incorporates its curriculum into 5^th and 7^th grade classrooms for our own thinking in San Francisco.

IV. Presentation on Safe Shelter Collaborative

Anna Jaeger from Caravan Studios presented on the Safe Shelter Collaborative.  Caravan Studios leverages technology to identify safe spaces already in existence for emergency housing placements for survivors of trafficking and/or domestic violence. The mission of the Safe Shelter Collaborative is to provide technology to locate available and appropriate shelter beds, to use technology to help crowdsource funds for hotel rooms for emergency housing, and to gather information from leaders in the field on best practices to support survivors. The Safe Shelter Collaborative was initially piloted in New Jersey and helped to improve agencies’ response to survivors in need of safe emergency housing to under five minutes. Now, there is also a Safe Shelter Collaborative in Northern California. The shelters are helping a broader diversity of survivors and reducing further traumatization by streamlining the process of finding safe housing and appropriate resources.

Anna took the group through each step of the Safe Shelter Collaborative process, highlighting that it is a tool to help the agency do its work more efficiently, not a tool for survivors directly. First, a survivor contacts an agency. If the survivor needs emergency housing and the agency does not have a bed available at that time, they can log in to the Safe Shelter Collaborative’s online system and answer ten basic questions about the survivor. The questions utilize non-identifying information to preserve confidentiality, while also completing required fields for other organizations to know if their beds would potentially be appropriate for the survivor (ie. gender, whether they have children, age range). The program does not utilize any client names and has recently removed citizenship as a question in anticipation of potential political changes in 2017. Once these basic questions are answered, that information is sent to other agencies in the collaborative who may have emergency beds. The other agencies receive a notification through text, call, or email (depending on their preferences) and respond to the request within 30 minutes. They can respond with a “no” or a “maybe.” No one is ever asked to guarantee a bed with a “yes.” The referring agency can then contact the organizations who have said that they may have the bed, or give their phone numbers to the survivor directly. By reaching out to all shelters at once, the Safe Shelter Collaborative significantly decreases the time it would take to call every shelter that may be appropriate. While the Collaborative just launched in October, it only takes 18 minutes for referring agencies to receive their first “maybe” in the Bay Area. As the Collaborative gains momentum in Northern California, they expect this time to decrease and the number of responses/available beds to increase.

If the referring agency is unable to find a good fit for its client, there is a crowdsourcing function to fund a night stay in a hotel for the survivor (if appropriate). It is up to the agency to determine if this is a safe and viable option for the survivor and also to determine which hotel would be best. However, the platform can help raise the funds to pay for the room of the agency’s choice.

501(c)(3) agencies can join the Safe Shelter Collaborative. In San Francisco, Larkin Street Youth is a part of the Collaborative and the Collaborative would love to have more San Francisco service providers on the platform.  There will be a training on January 27^th for agencies that are interested in joining the San Francisco Safe Shelter Collaborative. 

You can learn more at http://www.safesheltercollaborative.org/ or by emailing Anna at ajaeger@caravanstudios.org.

V. Youth Consultant / Fellowship for the Committee

In the October 2016 meeting of the Child Sex Trafficking Committee, the Committee suggested hiring a youth consultant, who had firsthand experiences with San Francisco systems, to inform the Committee’s work .

Alia Whitney-Johnson from Freedom FWD reported that they have secured funding to offer a 1 year fellowship to at least 3 young people, ages 18-25, to inform the Committee’s work. Based on meetings with youth survivors and service providers on structure, support, and compensation, the fellowship would provide support for youth to attend committee meetings and inform our work, support their leadership, advocacy, and communication skill development, and support them in designing and implementing their own project. Freedom FWD anticipates this being a 7.5 hour a month commitment for training, meetings, and projects and fellows would receive $5,000 for the year.

Alia invited the group to provide ideas and feedback and to get in touch with her in the next few days if interested in helping inform the fellowship or application process. She also said that Freedom FWD is looking for an implementing partner provide support to the fellows in this process and to provide training and technical support. If any agencies would like to support the fellows they can send Alia (alia@freedomfwd.org) a paragraph about why their agency is a good fit.

The group discussed whether the current committee meetings are appropriate for survivors and youth. If survivors attend the committee meetings, it would be a good idea to have a training for the members of the committee on intentional language and how to create a safe space for youth.  It would be very important to prepare youth in advance of committee meetings. The group also highlighted how important it was to ensure fellows were at the right phase of their healing process. Several people also highlighted the importance of being mindful of those who are not selected, if there is an application process. The group liked the idea of embracing a range of experiences, including those who may be vulnerable to trafficking. Contact Alia through email at alia@freedomforward.org with additional comments.

VI. Roadmap for 2017: Focus Areas and Expected Challenges

The Committee ran out of time and voted to table this item for an email conversation or the next meeting and wrap-up with announcements instead.

VII. Announcements

• Johanna Gendelman reminded the Committee about the newly launched “Love With Strings” campaign (see emails from Minouche from December with all materials). She was also able to successfully translate the posters into Spanish and Chinese.

 

• Antonia Lavine reminded the Committee about SFCAHT’s 2017 Teen Poster and Writing Contest. This year’s deadline is February 6^th, 2017.

 

• Tony Flores let the Committee know that SFPD has been tracking Backpage.com. Despite the fact that they censored the escort section, traffic has now moved to the “dating services” section of the site.

 

VIII. Next Steps

1. Contact Ana Jaeger (ajaeger@caravanstudios.org) if your agency would like to get involved with the Safe Shelter Collaborative (http://www.safesheltercollaborative.org/)

 

2. Contact Alia Whitney-Johnson (alia@freedomfwd.org) with suggestions or questions about the youth advisory fellowship.

 

3. Submit items you would like to cover at the next Committee meeting to Alia Whitney-Johnson (alia@freedomfwd.org).

 

Next Meeting:  March 8, 2017 from 1:30 – 3:00 pm

25 Van Ness Ave, Room 330A

San Francisco, CA