Strengthening the Child Welfare Response to Trafficking Act (H.R. 469)

Issue

Domestic child trafficking remains a serious problem in the United States. More than 293,000 American youth are at risk of sexual commercial exploitation and trafficking per year.

The U.S. Department of Justice reports that between 2008-2010, 83 percent of sex trafficking victims found within the United States were U.S. citizens, and 40 percent of sex trafficking cases involved the sexual exploitation of children.

Far too often, state child welfare systems fail to properly identify and assist trafficked and exploited children. The protections, services, and protocols established for abused and neglected children within the child welfare system are rarely extended to trafficked children and youth, and in many states, such children are not even categorized as victims.

Instead, they are often sent to the juvenile justice system and treated as criminals for, at no fault of their own, being raped and trafficked.

Solution

Ensure that child welfare agencies have systems in place to properly identify, assess, and document child victims of trafficking.  

Bill Summary

This bill will strengthen the child welfare response to child trafficking by ensuring each state develops a child protection plan with:

1.      Provisions and procedures to identify and assess all reports involving children known or suspected to be victims of sex trafficking;

2.      Training for child protective services workers to appropriately respond to reports of child trafficking; 

3.      Policies and procedures to connect child victims to public or private specialized services.  

Further, this bill would ensure that states submit an annual report on the number of children identified as victims of sex trafficking within the already existing National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems.

Finally, the Department of Health & Human Services will be required to submit a report to Congress outlining the prevalence and type of child trafficking within the child welfare systems, best practices for serving such victims among states, and current barriers to serving child victims comprehensively.