How to Keep Youth Out of Trafficking

Format

Individual Presentation

Presenters

Taylor Baierlein, Child Advocates of Placer CountyFollow

First Presenter's Institution

Child Advocates of Placer County

First Presenter’s Email Address

taylor@casaplacer.org

First Presenter's Brief Biography

Taylor Baierlein is a Program Manager at Child Advocates of Placer County (CASA) and has been working there for the last nine years advocating for high needs children through the foster care system. In 2019, she created BE BOLD Youth Program that empowers and serves youth who are at risk, or current victims of trafficking. Her program has served over 100 girls between the ages of 7 to 21. Taylor has been working with children coaching, mentoring, and teaching since she was a teenager herself. Her passion to work with youth and people has allowed her to travel to various countries along with serving locally in her community. She has also volunteered at Shriners Hospitals for Children and been a board member for Fifty5Five, an organization supporting teachers overseas. She holds a B.A. in Psychology and studied Journalism and Early Childhood Development.

Strand #1

Hands: Safety & Violence Prevention

Strand #2

Home: Family & Community Engagement

Relevance

I believe that strand III, IV, and V all apply to my presentation, but I have chosen III and V as my top two. For III. “Hands,” this very much encompasses the end goal of educating people about how widespread and lucrative the child sex trafficking industry has become. Keeping children safe, away from violence, abuse, neglect and so on should be one of our main priorities in our respective communities. I feel that prevention is one of our greatest ways to combat these issues, which is something I would like to talk more in depth about. I want to give safe adults realistic ways to have conversations with children around their safety, the many layers of “safe sex” (beyond just birth control, like consent, dangers of excessive pornography use, etc.), red flags to watch for from an observation stand point, and basic rules of thumb when working with youth that will be very helpful in preparing them with the proper tools should something like this ever present itself in their lives.

This flows into the second strand, V. “Home” because through this information, there needs to be learning around how the adults around children need to work together, and step in to accomplish proper prevention and support in situations where a child is already a victim. Raising awareness is key in this, as well as equipping those around children with the information and skills to identify, prevent, and support. This can be at the family level, school level, county level, the list goes on. It only takes one safe adult to make a difference, but we can make an even greater impact and at a higher level when we work together in our separate entities.

Brief Program Description

There are more children in slavery today, more than any other time in history because of how lucrative and fast-growing the human trafficking industry has become. Many people do not realize that this is happening in their own backyards. I will be raising awareness, teaching preventative strategies, and giving tools to support the youth in your life.

Summary

I will be talking about Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) and how it is something that not only happens in America, but many times in our own backyards. Some areas of focus will be identifying risk factors, red flags to look for, ways to support victims, and preventative measures to take. What this will look like is information around the types of conversations adults need to be having with children, harm reduction, safety planning, the many layers of “safe sex,” and supportive essentials. This will also include information about having awareness in our communities, collaborative work in multidisciplinary teams serving youth that can make a large impact and provide general CSEC resources. I want to equip the audience with “hands on” tools that will help them when they go back to their everyday roles so that they can keep the children around them safe. Through creating and running my own program I believe that I can give these tools to other people to help them at a smaller scale, or at a larger scale if they want to start similar types of services or programs for youth. Things like weekly mentorship, peer groups, education, healthy extracurricular outlets, and finding ways to get immediate needs met can make all the difference for a child who is at risk with little to no support. Children are also getting completely inundated with social media and are much more susceptible than they realize to grooming and coercion from predators online. Many safe adults cannot keep up with the ever-changing world of technology, which is another aspect that will be addressed is how to educate children better on navigating the internet in a safer way. If we can have educated individuals in schools for example (or any other entity that serves children), then youth that do not have this kind of support at home will have a better chance of a safe and successful future.

Evidence

First, there is a lot of research already that scientifically supports, regardless of previous trauma experience level, that a child having at least one stable and committed relationship with an adult in their life makes a huge difference (one of the most important factors!). From a developmental standpoint to resiliency skills and learning emotional and physical skills to thrive in adversity. One example of this research was done by the Center on the Developing Child through Harvard University. This is something our agency, Child Advocates, stands strongly by, and have created our programs to serve our community with this in mind. I have seen this in my day-to-day work and in my program where we track several specific areas of our cases with the youth we serve. These areas are, continued trafficking involvement, if they are on track in school, if they have a job (if age appropriate), if they have stable housing, and if they created a lifetime connection with an adult from our program that helped support them in these areas. Just in our previous closed cases alone, (70 youth thus far), some of our outcomes are as follows: 90% of our youth that went through our program had no more safety concerns around trafficking at the close of their case. 91% were back on track with their schoolwork and/or graduated. 97% were in a stable home environment and 82% felt that they created a lifetime connection with their adult they had been matched with from our program. These adults were equipped with the awareness and training I would like to continue to teach outside of our organization.

Learning Objective 1

Participants will be able to identify what CSEC is along with red flags/warning signs.

Learning Objective 2

Participants will be able to use preventative measures for the children in their life.

Learning Objective 3

Participants will be able to understand basic ways to support victims.

Keyword Descriptors

Sex trafficking, high risk/needs, trauma, preventative practices, ending exploitation.

Presentation Year

2024

Start Date

3-4-2024 9:45 AM

End Date

3-4-2024 10:15 AM

Recommended Citation

Baierlein, Taylor, "How to Keep Youth Out of Trafficking" (2024). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 2.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2024/2024/2