Wellspring Living and Child Advocacy Center of Georgia Partner to Serve Minor Sex Trafficking Victims Across Georgia

Founded in 2001, Wellspring Living (WL) is a nonprofit organization in Atlanta, Georgia that provides adult trafficking victims and trafficked minors including girls, boys and transgender youth with specialized services through four residential programs, two community based programs and graduate services.  A partner to Wellspring Living in this project is Child Advocacy Centers of Georgia (CACGA).  Established in 1994, CACGA unites 52 child advocacy centers across the state of Georgia as one team focused on eradicating all forms of child maltreatment, including human trafficking.  CACGA operates the only statewide crisis hotline for youth human trafficking victims, initiates crisis intervention, and provides ongoing case management and co-facilitates the state’s monthly CSEC Multidisciplinary Team meetings.  

WL and CACGA will partner to offer services that will expand the coordination of evidence-based services across multiple agencies and increase the victim-centered, trauma-informed, survivor-informed, culturally-specific services available to an increased number of victims through the Trafficked Youth Collaboration Project (TYCP).  These services will come from a combined 47 years of experience in services for labor and sex trafficking survivors.  

The Trafficked Youth Collaboration Project (TYCP), representing the partnership between Wellspring Living and Children’s Advocacy Centers of Georgia, plans to approach services for victims with emphasis on trauma-informed, evidence-based, culturally-relevant, age-appropriate interventions while framing training opportunities within the context of an adult learning model.  TYCP also plans to approach service provision and training from a survivor-informed perspective.  These services provided by TYCP include: Crisis Intervention, Client Intake, Case Management, and Mental Health Treatment.  

Serving specialized communities requires culturally appropriate assessment and service delivery.  In Georgia, few areas offer culturally appropriate services for underserved populations: males and transgender individuals or those of communities of color.  This project fills these gaps in services by expanding the coordination of services across multiple agencies and increasing the trauma-informed, culturally-appropriate services available to an increased number of victims. This grant will serve all youth victims (including girls, boys and nonbinary youth) who have experienced sex trafficking, ages 12-17, from across Georgia.  We expect the majority of youth served to come from communities of color.  In 2020, 62% of victims were African American, 6% were Latinix, and 10% of victims were from other cultural backgrounds.