Mayor’s Task Force on Anti-Human Trafficking

Youth Trafficking Committee Meeting Minutes

Wednesday, October 3, 2018 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

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

Attendees:

 

Jen Daly, Legal Services for Children; Carly Devlin, Huckleberry Youth Programs; Abigail Ellis, Senator Feinstein’s Office; Hong Le, Bay Area Legal Aid; Katie Lorish, AnnieCannons; Minouche Kandel, Department on the Status of Women; Annie Ma, Supervisor Tang’s Office; Paola Martin del Campo, Safe and Sound;  Elisabet Medina, Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing; Angie Miot-Nudel, Larkin Street Youth Services; Emily Murase, Department on the Status of Women, Miguel Palmer, Love Never Fails; Kyoko Peterson, Department on the Status of Women; Angelina Romano, San Francisco Unified School District; Mary Steiner, UNA USA SF;

 

 

1. Welcome, Introductions/Check-In, Agenda Review [Minouche Kandel]

 

2. Review of Minutes from August 1st 2018 Meeting, Announcements [Minouche Kandel]
   1. Minutes were approved [Carly Devlin/Hong Le]
   2. Announcements:
      1. Safe and Sound announced that there is a training at the National Criminal Justice Training Center on multidisciplinary teams and child pornography. There are 3 spots available and people should let Paola Martin Del Campo know if they are interested.
      2. On October 20^th there is an UNA US SF event for United Nations day on gender pay parity and other topics.
   3. The committee is looking for a new co-chair. The two co-chairs serve two year terms that are staggered, so Alia Whitney-Johnson will be ending her time as co-chair and Ifasina will be continuing her time for another year.

 

3. Feedback on engagement of Youth Advisory Board [All]
   1. Minouche Kandel lead an activity to give feedback on the first year of the Youth Advisory Board. Participants anonymously wrote answers to each of the three questions on index cards.
      1. What worked well about youth engagement over the past year?

Participants felt that being able to hear from the youth voice was valuable. It is a positive thing to incorporate more voices and hear from those most impacted. It reminded the adults that their priorities are not necessarily the youths’ priorities and informs committee on what would and would not work in reality. Participants appreciated the constructive critique and pushing adults to do better around pronouns, equity, etc.

2. What could make youth engagement better?   

Orientation and prepping of the adults in the room for norms of the space and how to be respectful. Making sure adults are actually committed to incorporating youth voice and understand mistrust youth may have. Also giving youth more orientation and guidance about the topics for discussion. Changing the structure of meetings to make participation more equitable. Possibly a youth co-chair. One suggestion was increasing their participation at the general task force meetings.  

3. What is one thing you learned from the Youth Advisory Board?

Learned a lot about how youth view terms that are commonly used by adults, such as CSEC, trafficking, sex worker, etc. Also learned about the fear that youth have of the police. Also learned that honoring indigenous people’s role in environment is important to them.

2. Discussion: Participants discussed the change of space suggestion as well as the orientation for adults. There was a suggestion that the orientation for adults could come in the form of a handout. The suggestions relating to the police were also discussed. Captain Yin from the Special Victims Unit wants to engage with the work of the Task Force, but there is uncertainty about if the youth committee is the best place for that. Some said that they thought that the youth benefit from learning from the police and that both sides can from benefit from hearing from each other. Some felt that this is a place where youth can learn. In addition, some said that this is a place to do policy work and make decisions, and policy work cannot be done without the police. Also said that older survivors could serve as mentors for youth. Others said that if the youth are asking for the police to not be present at the meetings, the committee should honor their request. One example is the Sex Work and Trafficking Policy Impact Committee, where the policy is for the police to come only when they are specifically invited.

 

4. Breakouts of workgroups

 

5. Group Debrief
   1. Housing and Placements

Want to take the recommendations that were developed, and see how those can be advocated for. Looking into what the costs are, what partners there are, how implementation would work. Going to prioritize ones that do not involve Family and Children’s Services, since their director just stepped down.

2. Prevention

They went over the questions from the youth survey. They felt that there were too many questions and that they need to narrow it down. More work needs to be done on language and target audience. The original deadline for this was August, so we need to figure out what the actual timeline is.

3. Employment

Those who met in this workgroup were not previous members, so they did not have context on what the survey was supposed to achieve. They felt that some of the questions were too broad and others could be stated better.

4. There was commentary about the fact that there is not enough capacity on the committee and that at each meeting some previous participants cannot come. In addition, new people come, so a lot of time is spent on getting new people up to speed. There was a suggestion to have notes from previous sessions for participants to read and understand what happened in the past.