Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) for the Field Generated Strategies to Address the Criminalization of Minor Victims of Sex Trafficking Program Sites (Field Strategies TTA)

The Field Strategies TTA Project goal is to support Purpose Area 1 Program Sites to end the criminalization of minor victims of sex trafficking in their development, expansion, or strengthening of victim service programs to support victim-centered, trauma-informed, developmentally appropriate, evidence-based responses to minor victims of sex trafficking. Beneficiaries of this TTA will be communities across the country, as determined by OVC’s selection of project sites, and other communities observing their innovations.

NCJFC, APA, and the Gault Center (project partners) will focus on the following activities:

Develop Technical Assistance Series, addressing 1) Trafficking Interventions: Building Community Capacity to Interrupt and Intervene in Child Sex Trafficking, 2) Collateral Consequences and Alternatives to Criminalizing Victims, 3) Trafficking, Historically Marginalized Communities, and Building Culturally Responsive Communities, and 4) Adolescent Development, Trauma, and Resilience.

Provide each of the nine sites a dedicated team of TTA Leads who will work directly with the site (thru phone calls and site visits) to plan and conduct stakeholder education events, peer-to-peer education and support, and to develop a Logic Model and TTA Plan for the project period.

Convene and connect sites to a Child Sex Trafficking Survivor Panel. These adults, with lived experience, will advise the project partners and sites on meaningful, safe engagement of survivors in designing and implementing projects.

Host an annual All-Sites Meeting. This two-day, peer learning collaborative will serve as an opportunity for TA providers, expert advisors, and/or adult survivors to support site representatives through training, resource development and connection, and peer-to-peer learning and exchange among multidisciplinary site teams.

Project partners NCJFCJ will interview site stakeholders from each site after twelve and 30 months of funding, and use those findings to inform a site-specific memo documenting their current priorities, resources, strategies, challenges, and successes. These memos will inform TTA efforts immediately, as well as subsequent “lessons learned” materials.

The project partners expect this level of training and technical assistance to result in grantees’ successful design and implementation of victim-centered, trauma-informed, developmentally appropriate, and evidence-based responses to minor victims of sex trafficking, and a body of relevant core training and community resources. In addition, community stakeholders and the public will have heightened understanding of the collateral consequences and harmful impact of criminalizing victims of sex-trafficking, and the community benefits to alternative responses.