Mayor’s Task Force on Anti-Human Trafficking

Child Sex Trafficking Subcommittee

Wednesday October 14, 2015     1:30pm-3:00pm

25 Van Ness Avenue, Room 330A, San Francisco, CA

 

Attendees:

Jazmine N/A, Young Women’s Freedom Center; Julia Arroyo, Young Women’s Freedom Center; Patricia Barragan, SFDA Victim Services; Patrick Buckalew, Huckleberry House; Vanessa Cerda, SFDA Victim Services; Emily Dauria, UCSF, Dept. of Child Psychiatry; Natasha Dolby; Quora Epps, Young Women’s Freedom Center; Sherry Ezhuthachan, San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center; Johanna Gendelmen, Family Children’s Services; Kelly Gillian, NALLS Foundation; Jada Green, Young Women’s Freedom Center; Laura Hackney, Annie Cannons; Kim Hyu -mi, API Legal Outreach; Minouche Kandel, Department on the Status of Women; Alison Lustbader, Community Behavioral Services; Ade Ngenu, MISSEY; JaMel Perkins; Alana Rotti, Department on the Status of Women; Niki Severson, Department on the Status of Women; Maria Tourtchaninova, Department on the Status of Women; Linda Walubengo, Larkin Street Youth Services; Alia Whitney Johnson, Emerge Global; Ophelia Williams, Young Women’s Freedom Center

 

I.Update on San Francisco Unified School District Resolution (Minouche Kandel)

The resolution to address human trafficking systematically was passed by the school board last night. The resolution requires the training of all adults within the school district, updating the child abuse protocol, and involving youth leadership through peer engagement.

 

II.Update on Family & Children’s Services Protocol & CSEC Advocate (Johanna Gendelmen)

Family and Children’s Services found a steering committee to develop a front-end interagency protocol for when possible commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC) are discovered through various points. This protocol is still a draft. Huckleberry Youth Programs has been selected to develop the CSEC advocate program.

The next step is to develop the multi-disciplinary team (MDT), which will be run by the Child Abuse Prevention Center. The Steering Committee has asked that each of the partner agencies develop their own protocol through a trauma informed lens. S.H.A.D.E, an agency of local human trafficking survivor advocates, has been hired to give input on the protocols each agency will develop in order to have a survivor’s voice on these protocols.  

Family and Children Services will be the first call made when a potential victim is identified. The phrase “arrest should be avoided if at all possible,” was the recommended language used within the protocol. An officer shall consult with a CSEC Advocate and a Child Protective Services hotline worker before they make any arrest.

 

III.Presentations from Agencies

1.SFOKAY Collaborative: LYRIC, APILO, Asian Women’s Shelter (Hyun-Mi Kim).

The SFOKAY Collaborative started in January of 2014 to serve survivors of human trafficking ages 18-24 or those at risk within the Bay Area. The strength of this collaborative is that each partner has specific expertise in various fields. For example, API Legal Outreach has been working with international human trafficking survivors for the past 15 years.

When LYRIC and AWS receive new case referrals, APILO assesses their legal needs. Between the three agencies, the collaboration has been able to serve 41 clients since January 2014.

Shelter space is a struggle for clients. A bed is not always guaranteed for human trafficking victims. In such a case, there is the option of a secure motel the client may stay in for a couple of nights. AWS also provides the case management portion of the coalition and administers both individual and group counseling support. AWS has a 24-hour crisis hotline based on a multi-language access model. AWS has human trafficking and domestic violence trained advocates who speak up to 38 different languages. The shelter is not for youth under the age of 18.

Together with LYRIC, AWS handles all non-legal services. At times this includes outreach to high school campuses in Oakland and San Francisco.

Currently, the collaboration is trying to incorporate human trafficking curriculum into the counseling program at San Francisco Unified School District. This has begun in reaction to the crisis of unaccompanied minors from South America.

 

2.The Young Women’s Freedom Center (Ophelia Williams)

The Young Women’s Freedom Center (formerly the Center for Young Women’s Development), is for low income, cisgender, and transgender girls and young women of color in crisis. Some are parenting or pregnant, have been abused, neglected, or are living on the margins of society. The agency meets the girls where they are whether that is on the street, in lock up, or through referrals. This year the agency is prioritizing three key strategies: leadership development through community organizing and advocacy, power building, and sisterhood through healing and care management. There are multiple support groups, one of which is Youth Mothers United for formally incarcerated young mothers or expecting mothers. When these young women are empowered to survive crisis, they can and will resist the many forms of oppression. In a year’s time the agency served up to 250 clients through outreach and referrals.

The agency has been undergoing a transition to figure out what their unique contribution would be to the community. Because partnership is a core value, the agency wanted to be in partnership and not in competition.  The result of this was that the Young Women’s Freedom Center brings strength and power to the table. The idea is to, “instill leadership to take ownership.” The agency takes young women and then makes them into leaders.

In June, the agency graduated ten girls and were able to hire many of them back as community organizers.

 

3.Larkin Street Youth Services ( Linda Walubengo)

Larkin Street provides health and wellness, housing, education, and employment services to youth ages 12-24 in the Bay Area with a greater emphasis on San Francisco. There are 25 programs within San Francisco alone, with 14 of them dedicated to housing sites. The programs Larkin Street provides include case management, GED, behavioral health, and overall wrap around services.

Diamond is an underage emergency shelter housing mostly current or previous foster youth and at-risk youth. The shelter holds 40 youths each night. Lark-Inn is an over age emergency shelter for ages 18-24 and also holds 40 young adults each night. Services for this population stops when they hit their 25^th birthday. LOFT is designed for youth 16-18 years of age and is one of the several transitional housing programs youth and young adults can access for up to two years. These transitional housing programs help stabilize youth by offering case management, life skills, health goals, education, and employment plans.

Larkin Street is a diverse agency with programs catered specifically for HIV positive, LGBTQ youth, severe mental health, transitional living programs, housing, parenting youth, and classic case management. To be eligible for Larkin Street, youth have to be Bay Area residents 12-24 years of age and meet the criteria of being homeless. Larkin Street also has drop-in sites for laundry, computer access, meals, lockers, clothing, and other services. This past year 3,000 youth were served.

Larkin Street lacks sufficient beds, and needs assistance with distinguishing between over age clients who are either being trafficked or are voluntary engaging in sex work. Larkin Street has started working with West Coast Children’s Clinic to better identify youth that are being sexually exploited. The pilot program began in May, and since then, 22 trafficked youths have been identified. Half were female while the other half were male, with one male identifying as gay. It is possible that youth are not comfortable identifying as LGBTQ. Larkin Street is considering bringing on a case manager who specializes in assessing CSEC. Currently, Larkin Street does not have CSEC specific beds. When a CSEC youth is identified, Larkin does its best to find shelter for the youth if their own beds are filled.

The website www.onedegree.com is an all agency resource on emergency shelters, housing, and food resources with updated information (such as the availability of beds). Currently, a San Francisco resource guide is in the process of being formulated.

 

4.Community Behavioral Health Services (Alison Lustbader)

The Department of Public Health’s Community Behavioral Health Services (CBHS) received a large grant from the Mental Health Services Act on a state level to do a crisis triage program. This program has three components. The first is an anonymous warm line run by the Mental Health Association of San Francisco. This is not a hotline, but rather a tool for individuals or families of individuals experiencing mental illness. All warm line workers have lived experience and provide a person to talk to, who may have gone through a similar situation. The warm line is open seven days a week from 7 am-11 pm. The second component features mobile teams to respond to teens in crisis. The first team is Spanish speaking, and focuses on the unaccompanied minors from South America, Central America, and Mexico. Therapists, psychiatrists, and various services are provided to families and children in order to stabilize their situation and treat trauma. Another team is the Family Mosaic Project, whose focus is on victims of crime from the Southeast. Finally, a third team at Edgewood, is centered on children and families who experience frequent hospitalization. The grant funded personnel, which equips each team with family therapists, psychiatrists, and anything else the families may need. Some funding from this program was provided to Huckleberry Youth Programs for their CSEC Advocate program. The final third component was to create a stabilization unit that is a 23-hour facility. The idea is for a child experiencing a psychiatric crisis to come into the facility to stabilize and then return home.

 

5.Huckleberry House and Huckleberry Youth Programs (Patrick Buckalew)

Huckleberry House started in 1967 as the first run-away shelter in the USA. The shelter is based around the concept of youth having somewhere safe to go to work through problems with a safe adult and then return home. Today, Huckleberry House is a 24-hour shelter for youth 11-17years of age. The youth may either be domestic, local, or international.  It is a six bed shelter with a 24-hour crisis hotline. Most of the youth that attend the shelter are facing problems at home with parents, drugs, or health issues. Youth with severe concerns such as trafficking or severe mental health issues usually stay in the shelter longer than 24-hours, however federal law mandates a time limit of 21 days. Services available are crisis intervention, family therapy, case management, health center care, and a CSEC specific case manager.

The agency’s ultimate goal is to get youth back home safely. As mandated reporters, Huckleberry House works closely with CPS when needed. Ninety-five percent of youth are reunified back with their parents or a family member. The program is really viewed more as a preventive measure before a youth gets into a worse situation. 

Huckleberry House is currently creating a new 24-hour response to CSEC. There would be three advocates and one manager leading this new program. For 24-hours a day, a CSEC advocate will be on-call in San Francisco. The Advocate team would work on prevention work, run support groups, and do case management. Huckleberry House encounters a housing crisis for transition-age foster youth as well as a lack of shelters for youth under 18 years of age who are on formal probation. 

 

IV.Next Steps

Next meeting date December 9^th 2015. Agencies that have not yet presented will do so. Please email Minouche Kandel for any suggestions for possible agenda items.