Sex Trafficking and Vulnerable Youth

October 16, 2019

Eugene, OR — Those who work in the child welfare system are very aware of how vulnerable children in care are to being lured into sex trafficking. Staff at state, county, and private agencies also know that caregivers can play a valuable role in intervening when they see warning signs. Recently, several states joined in partnership with FosterParentCollege.com to produce a web-based training to assist foster, adoptive, and kinship parents in understanding the complexities of sex trafficking and what it looks like. The interactive course, titled Understanding Sex Trafficking, has been released.

“Many of the factors that cause children to end up in the child welfare system also make them more vulnerable to sex trafficking,” says Jennifer Shimer, one of the content experts for this course. While some parents may think that sex trafficking doesn't happen in their community, Ms. Shimer explains that “this mistaken view can cause resource parents to miss warning signs and opportunities for prevention and intervention.”

FosterParentCollege.com is an innovative approach to offering foster, adoptive, and kinship families research-based training in the convenience of their own homes. The website currently provides 65+ training courses, including 14 offered in both English and Spanish. These courses have been viewed well over 400,000 times, and parents rate them as very informative.

The Understanding Sex Trafficking course first helps parents understand what the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is and what it looks like; later it explores some of the myths and facts that surround sex trafficking and explains why children in care are especially at risk. The course ends with a discussion on how traffickers target and manipulate vulnerable children.

While every person who is trafficked has a unique experience, the course uses a fictionalized story, based on many true stories, about a foster teen who was trafficked to illustrate how sexual exploitation might happen to a child in care. It concludes with strategies for parents to help keep their children safe from exploitation.

Jennifer Shimer, the presenting expert for this course, is co-developer of the prevention curriculum, Closing the Gap: A Caregiver Approach to Reducing the Risk of Child Sex Trafficking and Exploitation, and co founder of ABOVE the Path, an organization that provides trauma-informed training and support to youth- and family-serving programs.

To watch a short preview of Understanding Sex Trafficking, visit fosterparentcollege.com/course-info/csec. For more information about the course or FosterParentCollege.com, contact Lee White at Lee@northwestmedia.com.