Overview
In partnership with the Office of the Governor’s Child Sex Trafficking Team, The Texas Center for Child and Family Studies is helping to build sustainable capacity and improve the quality of care at emergency and long-term residential placements identifying and responding to commercially sexually exploited youth (CSEY), or youth at-risk of CSE through trauma-responsive training and technical assistance, clinical support, and program evaluation efforts. Project activities are focused specifically around CSEY best practice for clinicians and direct care staff, building capacity for new or improved specialized services for this population, organizational policies and procedures, and program-level improvement. As the need for these services grow, our team works to continuously identify potential gaps and determine what supports are needed to serve this vulnerable population.
In May of 2020, the Texas Center for Child and Family Studies published its Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Youth Statewide Assessment, which looked at the scope of the commercial sexual exploitation of youth in Texas, risk factors for trafficking, barriers to exiting trafficking, currently available services to this population in the State of Texas, barriers to the provision of more robust services, and funding sources utilized by service providers.
Drawing from the previous research conducted during the Statewide Assessment, in September 2021, our team completed a project aimed to provide training and technical assistance to five organizations across the state to build capacity and improve services for this population. This project included providing training resources from state and national partners, creating and delivering customized trainings for staff, sustainability and strategic planning, effective communication planning, clinical technical assistance, survivor and one-on-one clinical case consultation, and assistance in creating survivor-informed policies and procedures for child welfare organizations.
Our staff are currently able to provide:
- CSEY Best Practice Consultations
- One-on-one Clinical Case Consultation
- Customized Training on a variety of CSEY Topics
- Level Improvement Consultations
- CSE-IT Training
- TBRI Caregiver Training
- Survivor Consultations
- Policies and Procedures Consultations
- CSEY Stages of Change Training
- Strategic & Sustainability Planning Services
- Communications & Outreach Consultations
