Identifying Victims and Providing Services to Survivors of Labor and Sex Trafficking in the Greater Houston Area

United Against Human trafficking proposes to implement comprehensive and enhanced trauma and survivor informed services for victims of labor and sex trafficking in Houston; develop, draft, and implement a bespoke labor and sex trafficking community prevention curricula; lead and capacitate a consortium of service providers under the Houston Human Trafficking Taskforce, and the Texas Attorney General’s Human Trafficking Prevention Taskforce; and create partnerships with business and industry experts to raise awareness of labor and sex trafficking in identified highly vulnerable industries. The purpose of this project is to enhance the capacity of service provides in trauma-informed programming, and to increase the identification of labor and sex trafficking, and the services available to victims. Project activities include rolling out an extensive outreach program to vulnerable and marginalized communities; establishing a partnership with business leaders and experts to establish a zero tolerance to labor and sex trafficking, and mitigate the risk of exploitation; providing trauma and survivor informed care training to partner service providers and stakeholders (including law enforcement); providing expert case management services to victims of labor and sex trafficking in service to the network, from referral through to reintegration, and ramping up efforts to increase the identification of child trafficking victims. Expected outcomes include an increase in the identification of victims of labor and sex trafficking; a disruption of trafficking networks by training the community in prevention strategies, general awareness, and knowledge of human trafficking; and for businesses to become actors in the fight against human trafficking.