ACF FY 15 Budget on Human Trafficking, April 23, 1pm to 2pm EST

>>Katherine Chon: Good afternoon and good morning to those on the West Coast. My name is Katherine Chon and I’m the 
Senior Advisor on Trafficking in Persons at the Administration for Children and Families here at the Department of Health and Human Services. There are a number of people on the call representing state governments, service providers, advocacy organizations, researchers, and I believe we have about a little over 200 participants registered for the call, so we know that there’s a lot of interest in learning more about our anti-trafficking efforts here. Joining in the room and on the call is quite a bit of representation across the Administration for Children and Families. I’ll open it up to colleagues to introduce themselves so you have additional names that you can connect to different programs and operations areas, and you will also be hearing from them throughout this call.

>>Chris Holloway: Welcome everyone; this is Chris Holloway from the Family and Youth Services Bureau of ACF. We are 
responsible for the Runaway and Homeless Youth Program.

>>Michelle Patterson: This is Michelle Patterson, and I’m in the Budget office for ACF.

>>Tricia Swartz: From the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

>>Maggie Wynne: Good afternoon, this is Maggie Wynne with the Anti-Trafficking in Person Division in the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

>>Rosie Gomez: This is Rosie Gomez with the Office for Child Abuse and Neglect.

>>Rochelle Rollins: Hi this is Rochelle Rollins with the Immediate Office of the Assistant Secretary.

>>Javan Owens: Hello, Javan Owens with the Office of Legislative Affairs and Budget, Legislative Affairs Division.

>>James Murray: James Murray with Regional Operations.

>>Tracy Shaw: Tracy Shaw with Regional Operations.

>>Rod Ashton: Rod Ashton with the Immediate Office of the Assistant Secretary.

>>Katherine Chon: With those introductions, I wanted to reiterate that this national briefing call is being recorded so 
we can post it online and share it with those who were not able to join us on the call. 

>>The reason why we are hosting this briefing: as many of you know there’s been ongoing and also increasing effort to 
coordinate and collaborate across Federal Government agencies and Anti-Trafficking efforts continue to be an area that 
touches most of the programs here at the Administration of Children and Families and also touches on a number of our 
other peer divisions within the Department of Health and Human Services. Earlier this year, the federal government 
released the first ever 5 year Strategic Action Plan on Services to Victims of Human Trafficking in the United States, 
which you can find online. Just several days ago, the Presidents Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking 
in Persons met where the Secretary Bill Corr from HHS signaled some of the upcoming activities and initiatives and 
commitments that HHS has to combat human trafficking and modern forms of slavery. On the budgeting front, as you’ll see 
in the background document that was sent to you via email, the Administration for Children and Families has received an 
increase in funding to serve victims of human trafficking and combat human trafficking, and we wanted to share some of 
that information with you on today’s call. Before going into that, I wanted to give you a quick overview of our agenda. 
We will:

1. Provide a brief overview of the Fiscal 2015 Budget Request on Human Trafficking.
2. Provide an overview of the budget process based on some of the pre-submitted questions that came in.
3. Various programs at ACF will provide some announcements related to current grant opportunities.
4. We will go through some questions and answers based on the pre-submitted questions.
5. At the end we will open up the lines for additional questions.

>>And so, briefly on the FY15 budget, as I mentioned in 2014 in the current Fiscal year we received $13,755,000 of funding 
to support victims of Human Trafficking and for the first time this year are able to put some of those funds towards serving 
domestic victims of trafficking or US citizens and lawful permanent residents. In 2015, our request for assistance for foreign 
national victims of trafficking is $12,000,000, which is at the same level for this current Fiscal Year. For FY 2015 request 
to serve Domestic Victims of Human Trafficking is $10,000,000, which is about $8,245,000 increased from this current years 
enacted level. 

>>So I just wanted to start off with that, and in the background document it provides some additional summarized information 
on where the department intends to use that funding, but of course we can go into more detail during the question and answer 
session. At this point I’d like to turn it over to Michelle Patterson to provide an overview of the budget process itself.

>>Michelle Patterson: Hello, this is Michelle. I’m a Budget Analyst for ACF and I work on several different programs, but 

>>Katherine asked me to speak to you just generally about the budget process so that everybody is on the same page for the 
discussion, and we all understood where we are in the process and where things go from here. So, I think the big thing to 
keep in mind is that the President’s budget for 2015 is only a request. It is what he would do if he were given the money 
that he wanted and how he would spend it, but Congress as you know has a say in things, and they are the ones who will finally 
be the deciders about what we call the appropriations, which is where the money is actually given to the Executive Branch to 
implement the policies. We submitted the budget in March and for the past month, there’s been some back in forth in the background 
where the appropriators have reached out to the department and may have requested some additional information, which we have 
already provided. They are currently conducting hearings and the will continue to conduct hearings to get more information about 
it. Preferably soon, they will begin the process where they debate, and they will decide the amount of money they want to give 
to the agencies and for what purposes. Remember that the House and the Senate conduct these things separately before they meet 
and come up with the final decisions, so be aware as you’re following the process that the House will do one thing and the Senate 
will do a separate thing, and they have to come together in the end on an agreement and the final agreement might not look anything 
like what either of them have been working on the last 6 months or so. In theory, they’re supposed to all have this done by October; 
everything’s been decided, they’ve conference together, they’ve come up with the final thing, then the President signs it and we 
continue our work. In practice, this never happens, so on October 1 we get what’s called the continuing resolution. And that will 
give us some instruction on how we are to operate, but generally what happens is what we have to maintain the same funding level as 
the previous year. So, we’ve dealt with that for the first couple of months every year before we get the final numbers, so keep in 
mind that over the next 6 months or see, you might be hearing a lot of information about what Congress thinks of the Presidents 
requests, but we won’t get anything final for some time now.

>>Katherine Chon: Thanks Michelle, and again hopefully we’ll have a chance to open it up for additional questions if you have any 
on the budgeting process itself. At this point, I would like to turn it over to a couple of our Program Offices on current, forthcoming 
grants, announcements based on our FY14 funding specifically in the appropriations to serve Victims of Human Trafficking, and also 
any discretionary funds that Program Offices have put towards serving victims of Trafficking. So Chris, I’ll hand it over to you first.

>>Chris Holloway: Thank you Katherine. Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to give a lot of information at this point because we’re 
still in the formulation process. What I can say publicly is that we did have funds transferred from ORR to the Family and Youth 
Services Bureau to support a Domestic Victims initiative and we’re in the process of drafting the program requirements. The hope 
and intent of putting out a funding opportunity announcement; sometime this summer the statue is pretty clear that we have to follow 
and focus our efforts on Domestic Victims – those will be US Citizens and Lawful Permanent residents and as the appropriations language 
confirmed and the statutory provision allows for us to focus our efforts on case management and comprehensive victim services for all 
Domestic victims of human trafficking, so that will be adults, youth, covering the full spectrum as long as they’re US citizens or 
Lawful Permanent residents. That’s about what I can get into at this point. We do have a forecast that’s out for public view that 
folks can look at which will essentially summarize the same things that I’ve just said. As more details become available, and we’re 
allowed to give more information, we’ll certainly make those available to the public.

>>Katherine Chon: And Rosie, on your end?

>>Rosie Gomez: In regards to Children’s Bureau, there is a forecast available on our HHS grants forecast website for a grant program 
titled Grants to Address Trafficking in Child Welfare populations. The purpose is to solicit proposals for projects that will address 
Human Trafficking within the Child Welfare populations and it’s really designed to continue the development of Child Welfare systems’ 
response to Human Trafficking through infrastructure building. So funded projects would be required to use a multisystem approach and 
coordinate with entities such as local law enforcement, criminal justice, court systems, runaway and homeless youth programs, children 
justice act grantees, child advocacy centers, and other necessary service providers. So, this grant is a 5 year grant, its $250,000 per 
year for the 5 years, the estimated date for the full funding opportunity announcement is May 16 and that will provide more information.

>>Katherine Chon: Thank you Rosie, and finally I will pass it on to Maggie Wynne.

>>Maggie Wynne:  Everyone, we just recently had a funding opportunity announcement out which closed on Monday so we will be starting the 
process of reviewing applications submitted and our expectation is to make awards by June 30th, with a July 1st start date. This is the 
Rescue and Restore Regional program grants which focus on coalition development, training and technical assistance, public awareness and 
outreach with a focus on foreign victims of human trafficking in the United States. We also expect to have out late this year: an announcement 
regarding the trafficking victim’s assistance program which provides case management and comprehensive services for foreign victims identified 
in the US. They can receive HHS certification and get connected to the public benefits and services that are also made available to Refugees. 
There is also a forecast as previously mentioned on the HHS website regarding this upcoming opportunity. Thank you

>>Katherine Chon: Thank you Maggie. So now we’re going to enter the start of our question and answer session starting with questions that have 
been pre-submitted by registered participants and I will read out the questions, a number of us in the room will respond and we will go from 
there. So the first pre-submitted question we received was:

>>1. What does internal HHS coordination on anti-trafficking efforts look like?

>>Rochelle Rollins: I’ll start by saying; it looks different than it used to look. We have been consolidating efforts and stating up infrastructure 
here at ACF level, with monthly meetings of a work group who talk about, brainstorm, and make decisions about the Human Trafficking efforts that ACF 
is doing. At the HHS level, we also have established a work group that is meeting quarterly, and that is being chaired by ACF and HHS’s Office of 
Women’s Health.  That group is growing and we’re getting number members. For example, we recently just got the Office of Population Affairs to join 
us regarding family planning’s and clinics to do some human trafficking work. So across HHS, people are very excited about the work of human trafficking. 
We also just presented the topic of Human Trafficking for the first time through the HHS Health Disparity Counsel last week. All of this is possible 
because of the Federal plan that was released in January with the goal of coordination, collaboration, and capacity.

>>2. What survivor input was included when deciding the 2015 budget?

>>Katherine Chon: As you know, we’ve been having ongoing and also increased efforts to engage with communities and stakeholders across various sectors 
including survivors of human trafficking throughout the years; especially this past year with the development of the Federal Strategic Action Plan. 
So the diverse perspectives are important to us as we hear from the fields of where the needs and gaps are, and how ACF and HHS can continue to meet 
those needs. When it comes to does this relate to survivors of human trafficking – there has been groups of survivors who have visited us here at the 
Administration for Children and Families for briefings. We also have participated in the National Survivor forum hosted by our colleagues at the Department 
of Justice earlier in January to hear from groups as well. We will continue to hear from survivors and other stakeholders in the community to inform, 
not just what we are currently doing in terms of our anti-trafficking efforts across multiple programs, but what we could be doing in the future. For 
example, we’ve heard for a while now that we need to be able to serve victims of all forms of human trafficking; foreign nationals, us citizens, lawful 
residents. That’s one of the reasons you see in the FY 14 budget that’s been enacted, how we are able to open up funding for domestic victims of human 
trafficking as well.

>>3. What programs and funding address economic self-sufficiency and employment development opportunities for victims of human trafficking?

>>Maggie Wynne: So, we fund victims’ assistance programs for foreign victims of trafficking and this has been ongoing for many years. We plan to continue 
it because it provides an essential aide to victims of human trafficking as they recover from their experience and try to achieve the independence and 
self-sufficiency to avoid being re-trafficked and going into re-trafficking situations, and for foreign victims starting a new life in the US. So, we support 
case management through NGO’s, through grants that we provide to principle grantees who then make sub awards to organizations throughout the country. It’s 
intended to provide support to victims of trafficking in the communities where they are, rather than focus in particular localities. Depending on if they’re 
found in Louisiana, or South Dakota, or San Diego, that victims can have service providers at hand, ready to give them assistance. A Key component of that is 
getting connected to public benefits and services which are principally established by the Federal Government in partnership, in many cases, with the States 
to help many people who are in precarious situations get back on their feet and start being able to achieve self-sufficiency and move on with their lives. 
So, that’s one of the reasons why our populations are connected to the same benefits and services available to refugees who are also coming to this country 
often with nothing and need help to get on their feet and get adjusted to American systems; basic transportation, monetary, and other avenues they need to 
learn in order to start independent lives in the US. Included in that is employment assistance and they are linked up Department of Labor programs that provide job training, job assistance, resume building, etc.

>>Katherine Chon: One thing I would add for Domestic Victims of Trafficking is that across, there are specific programs that the Administration for Children 
and Families has, focused on economic self-sufficiency and job development opportunities, and we are also coordinating with the Department of Labor. So there 
are existing programs that victims and survivors of human trafficking can access, certainly on a domestic end as well.

>>4. What funds are available to publicize the T visa program?

>>Maggie Wynne: We do fund programs of public awareness about trafficking and that may include training and technical assistance options for immigration 
release such as the T visa. We don’t have any funds dedicated specifically to publicize the T visa program, but we do try to provide opportunities for understanding about that through our grantees who both identify victims of trafficking as well as those who assist them to get HHS certification which involves either of the receipt of T visa or a continued presence document, both of which are forms of temporary immigration release.

>>5. Are small communities able to apply for anti-trafficking funds?

>>Rosie Gomez: In regards to the grant program that I mentioned earlier, it is available to state and local governments, non-profits, and also tribes, so I do think that there is an opportunity for smaller communities, once you read the full funding opportunity announcement to apply.

>>Maggie Wynne: So this is Maggie again with ORR. We have a couple of programs of grant programs where small communities may be eligible to receive funding. 
One is directly through the Regional programs. We do have a floor and ceiling for the funding of the grants, so the current announcement had $50,000 that was 
geared toward communities who had a problem with trafficking in their communities who do not need a large amount of money to pull together a coalition and start 
the networking if necessary to provide the system of identifying, referring, and supporting victims of trafficking. That is available to smaller communities, 
and also as I’ve previously mentioned, our services grantees often work with small communities in providing assistance to victims of trafficking if they are 
identified and living and being served there. The organizations can get reimbursed for the assistance that they provide.

>>6. How is the child welfare system taking action to respond to Human Trafficking?

>>Rosie Gomez: So besides the grant announcement that I mentioned, the Administration for Children Youth and Families did provide a document titled “The Guidance to States and Services in Addressing Children Trafficking and Youth in the United States” and this document elevated the issue of human trafficking, but it also offers guidance to child welfare systems and other service providers based on current research and practice to improve the collective responses issue. So, the guidance focuses on emerging knowledge, and practices that systems and services can consider integrating into existing activities. So, if you are not familiar with this guidance, I don’t know if we are going to send out information after this call, but you can also google guidance to states addressing human trafficking from ACYF. The other document I wanted to mention is “Emerging Practices within Child Welfare Response” and this was a briefing series document that list examples of anti-trafficking efforts that are under way across the United States. The examples include instituted mandatory screening, placing specialized child advocates in child welfare centers, training case workers, and coordinating on data collection. This document provides you with information on the kind of efforts that child welfare systems across the nations are involved in. The other thing I did want to mention is that, many child welfare systems are involved in task forces, in work groups, and in developing recommendations to address trafficking, so I think there is a lot of real work going on and I’m sure if you look at your local child welfare agency, there would be some examples of that.

>>7. How do we become a participant in the development of the improved health care service pilot program that was described by Deputy Secretary Corr at the recent President’s Interagency Task Force meeting?

>>Rochelle Rollins: So we were thrilled that the Deputy Secretary mentioned our project. It’s called SOAR and it stands for “Stop, Observe, Ask, and Respond to Human Trafficking”. This new pilot project is part of the plan and it’s under objective 6 in the plan, which reads, “Build capacity to better identify and serve victims through targeted training and technical assistance”. We did set up a technical working group, which was required of Health Care professionals, and we also of course added survivors to help us design this new SOAR initiative. The trainings goals for SOAR are to increase understanding of human trafficking from health care providers, increase their capacity to deliver culturally appropriate and trauma-informed care to the victims of human trafficking, recognize key indicators and warning signs ignored to identify potential victims, recognize their critical role in helping to increasing services to survivors of human trafficking, learn how to solicit relevant information from the victims and learn the importance of the referral process for victims. We are going to be very broad in our training in terms of the type of providers that will be trained. It will be medical providers, dentists, nurses, and mental health providers across the board and we will be going to 4 different sites. We have not announced where those sites are, but they are spread across the country. These trainings will happen in August and September; so to answer the question, “how can you become a part of it”, once we’ve announced where these pilot trainings are going to be, we will want providers to sign up to take the trainings. This is the first time we’ve done anything like this, so we are in the process now of trying to decide what are the best training materials to put in the short training and of course finalizing where we are going to go with this. Our idea was to have a network. We thought, we have a technical working group and there are a lot of people that want to be part of it and are still interested, but we are starting first with the training and we do want 
to eventually have a network of providers interested in working with us on the SOAR initiative.

>>Katherine Chon: Thank you Rochelle. So that ends the first part of our question and answer session with the pre-submitted questions from participants. At this point, we can open up the lines for additional questions. Please keep in mind the programs that are represented here today and also we have our Office of Legislative Affairs and Budget here as well. When you are thinking about your questions and if you want to direct it towards any particular program, that would be helpful for us. At this point, Michelle we can open up the lines for additional questions.

>>Moderator: If you would like to ask a question, please press * then 1 and clearly record your name to ask your question. If you would like to withdraw a question, press * then 2. Please hold for questions:

>>Rosalee Keytes: Thank you for having this conference. I’d like to know is there any monies being put aside for addressing the demands side and fighting that.

>>Katherine Chon: When we came out with the Federal Strategic Action Plan on Human Trafficking, the draft was release for public comment last spring. We received quite a number of comments and themes around addressing demand around prevention efforts, and we brought all of those comments back to the interagency working group. Because this particular Federal Strategic Action Plan is focused on victim identification and services, many of the items did not go into the final plan that was released in January. However, having said that, HHS along with many of our other Federal Partners have the responsibility to prevent human trafficking and recognize the importance of addressing prevention at multiple levels including the demand for both sex trafficking and labor trafficking, so we are currently internally working through what those efforts can be, specific to the current Fiscal year funds that are out there on human trafficking, the grant announcements are out focusing mostly on awareness raising, comprehensive victim services, training and technical assistance, and some on research as well. Looking ahead on FY 15, we are very mindful of the need to address prevention and will keep that in our internal discussions in the ACF working group, HHS working group, and of course the Interagency meetings that we have to raise it and see how we can put additional future funds on it. The one thing I would add is, Rochelle Rollins mentioned the SOAR to Health and Wellness initiative focused on raising awareness on human trafficking for medical and health providers and in our discussions with the Technical Working group, part of informing the training materials that we have, we have discussed the role of demand and how the health community can be engaged in that way.

>>Nathan Earl-Ark of Freedom: Good afternoon. My question is, what types of funding will become available for research and/or services in the realm of male specific sex and labor trafficking?

>>Katherine Chon: So Chris Holloway with the Family Youth Services Bureau had to step out of the room, but referencing back on what he said about the funding announcement in the HHS forecast at least on the Domestic Trafficking piece. It is intended to serve victims of all forms of trafficking, so adults and children, men/women, sex trafficking, labor trafficking and pretty much any demographic and population effected by human trafficking would be served through these domestic trafficking funds. Maggie, any thoughts on the foreign national side?

>>Maggie Wynne: We don’t have time to focus on a particular category of victims of trafficking. All foreign victims of trafficking in the US are eligible for benefits and services and victims are found in every area, so we don’t want to necessarily focus on just one population, but we do encourage and require all of our grantees to be broad in their outlook and not focus on just female victims of trafficking. They all have to work to identity and serve both men and women, and child victims of trafficking.

>>Nathan Earl:  I understand and appreciate this feedback. My concern and many NGO’s across the country is with this specific severe and critical vast of services that are available for boys and males, would it not be prudent to specifically address that with specific funding streams. As of now the public perception is that it is strictly women and girls, and until we can on a larger scale address that with awareness like certain activities that there are a significant number of boys that are invisible, I don’t believe we are going to see the momentum that’s needed unless they are male specific.

>>Katherine Chon: Thank you for raising that concern. I think it’s consistent with what we heard during the public comment period for the Federal Strategic Action Plan and also with the National Survivor Forum that happened in January, so we are aware that men and boys are under served and we would encourage the field, recognizing that the funding for victims of trafficking both on the foreign national side and on the domestic side that men and boys are eligible to receive those services, so we look forward to hearing from service providers on what more we can do in terms of raising awareness or bringing attention to the diversity of trafficking in our training and outreach efforts. I know that in our SOAR to Health and Wellness training for health providers, we are certainly mentioning how trafficking affects men and boys, so it is on our radar and the funds are there. To the specific question of whether there is a pool of funds dedicated to men and boys, there is not at this time, but men and boys who are affected by trafficking can be served through 
the current funding streams and the ones that will be opening up later this year.

>>Dianne Hinton: I was wondering about the comprehensive victim services and also if there has been some collaborative type of initiatives that feed into the healthy people 2020 goals and if so, what type of initiatives are taking place on the local and state levels.

>>Rochelle Rollins: So the Healthy Peoples is so broad. Which topic are you thinking about?

>>Dianne Hinton: Looking primarily at the type of initiatives that in fact will address the health issues and many health issues as far as health and wellness programs that can 
benefit many of the trafficking victims; food, nutrition, etc that could educate them and help them deliver healthy lifestyles.

>>Rochelle Rollins: I’m not sure that has been a strong link between the healthy people and human trafficking topic. What I can promise to do is to take that idea to the part of HHS that leads Health People and see among all the focused areas, mental health and social determinant health topic areas. That is a great idea and I thank you for it. Maybe by our next call, we will have some action on that.

(Call End)