ACF FY 16 Budget on Human Trafficking, February 13, 11:30am to 12:30pm EST >>Katherine Chon: Good morning everyone. My name is Katherine Chon, the Senior Advisor on Trafficking in Persons here at the Administration for Children and Families at HHS. We welcome all of the participants who’ve joined us this morning for our Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Briefing Call for anti-trafficking initiatives. The way we will run the briefing call today is: 1. I will provide an overview and introduce a number of colleagues here within the Administration for Children and Families. 2. Our Office for Legislative Affairs and Budgeting will provide a brief overview of the Budget process. 3. Program offices with give an update on their latest programming on anti-trafficking efforts. 4. Go into a period of answering pre-submitted questions that participants provided. 5. Open the call up to a wider question and answer session, time-permitting. So with that, I wanted to just start in the room with our colleagues across ACF to just introduce themselves and the program or office they are representing, so you can recognize them when they are responding to some of the questions. >>Michelle Patterson: Good morning, this is Michelle Patterson. I am with the ACF Budgeting office. >>Maggie Wynne: Good morning. Maggie Wynne, Director of the Division of Anti-trafficking in Persons in the Office of Refugee Resettlement in ACF. >>Catherine Nolan: Good morning everyone. This is Catherine Nolan, Director of the Office of Child Abuse and Neglect in the Children’s Bureau. >>Rochelle Rollins: Hello, I’m Rochelle Rollins, Human Trafficking Health Policy Advisor here in the Immediate Office of the Assistant Secretary. >>Bill O’Rourke: Good morning. I’m Bill O’Rourke with the Office of Budget in ACF. >>Katherine Chon: We also have a few colleagues joining us by phone. I will turn it over to colleagues from FYSB first: >>Karal Busch: Good morning, this is Karal Busch. I work with the Family and Youth Services Bureau. >>Bill Bentley: Hi, this is Bill Bentley. I’m the Associate Commissioner at the Family and Youth Services Bureau. >>Rosie Gomez: Good morning. This is Rosie Gomez with the Office of Child Abuse and Neglect in the Children’s Bureau. >>Katherine Chon: So as you can see, over the years we’ve been strengthening our response to human trafficking across multiple program offices. All 10 of our Regional offices are engaged in the anti-trafficking efforts and we hope that the FY 16 budget is also reflective of the diverse approaches integrating trafficking across multiple programs. What I want to do is just start off with an overview of the FY 16 budget, and as you saw while you were registering for this briefing call, there is about a $15 million proposal for new funding as part of the Child Abuse discretionary activity to develop a research base to serve victims of human trafficking in the child welfare system and support the implementation of The Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act which was enacted last September. There is a total of $9 million including an increase of $6.2 million compared to our FY2015 enacted funding and that is a proposal to expand our new domestic trafficking program, which we started in Fiscal year 14. That works to increase case management and direct assistance for victims and services of human trafficking who are US citizens and Lawful permanent residents, and also to support anti-trafficking research and evaluation and training and technical assistance. There are $13 million of total funds to support foreign national victims of trafficking in the ongoing programmatic efforts through the office of Refugee Resettlement. You will also see in the materials that were provided in the invitation to this call - there is language in the budget referencing foster care, implementing new anti-trafficking requirements for titled 4E agencies as part of the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act. At this time, I will turn it over to Michelle from our ACF budget office to give an overview of the budget in process. >>Michelle Patterson: So I am the ACF Budget Analyst for the Refugee and Resettlement Programs. The appropriations for the dedicated anti-trafficking funds are provided through the Refugee program that includes both the foreign victims’ anti-trafficking office and now the newest domestic victims’ anti-trafficking office. So that’s sort of my area of expertise, and what I will generally talk about today; I’m a budget analyst, not a program person, so the specifics are best left to Katherine and her folks, but I can sort of clarify for anybody who gets confused about the process, how it works. For 2015 we got our appropriations in December. For the Refugee office, an increase of $2 million was given for anti-trafficking programs. A decision was made to split that equally between the domestic victims and foreign victims, so that’s the 2015 money that we’re looking at right now. Its $13 million for foreign victims, $2.755 million for domestic and under Katherine’s guidance, the program offices are working on implementing that right now, making decisions about grants, contracts, technical assistance, and those sorts of things. What happened in February, just a couple of weeks ago is- we released out 2016 request. Now that is the key work; that is just a request. It is one the President has put forward to Congress and said I would like you to give me this amount of money. For the foreign victims, it is maintaining the 2015 level at $13 million and as Katherine has mentioned for Domestic Victims, there is a pretty good increase that has been requested along with the funds that come with the bigger child welfare programs and other parts of ACF. Now with any sort of annual appropriations process, you can’t count your chickens before they hatch. You can’t count on this request being the amount of money that you’re going to get for 2016, so while it is good government to talk about what we would like to do in 2016, please know that you could get $25 million, you could get $125 million, you could get $2 million, or you could get nothing. So that is the sort of thing to bear in mind; while we’re looking at a nice pot of money for the entire victim service program, we don’t have that money in hand. >>Katherine Chon: So at this time, we will turn it over to some of our key program offices for any updates or announcements that they may want to provide in relation to anti-trafficking programming starting with the program of Refugee Resettlement. >>Maggie Wynne: We have not current funding opportunity announcements, but we are preparing announcements to continue funding for the trafficking victim assistance program, which is our comprehensive case management assistance to foreign victims of trafficking in the United States. The funding goes to organizations to extend our contracts and subcontracts around the country who are reimbursed on a per capita basis, depending on how many victims of trafficking they are assisting either to achieve certification or for a period of time after certification, to get connected to benefits and services that are available to Refugees. In this past Fiscal year, we’ve awarded 18 grants under the Rescue and Restore regional program and those are 3 year grants. So, the next funding opportunity will come in FY 17. And our other major program is the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, which is a 24/7 hotline that is in the 2nd year of the 3 year grant. >>Katherine Chon: Now turning it over to our colleagues at the Family and Youth Services Bureau. >>Karal Busch: We currently do have a trafficking program that funds through grants that are in Utah, New York, and Arizona for comprehensive and coordinated case management. That is a 2-year project which ends September of next year. We also have a funding announcement that is coming out in the next 2 months or so, which will have a case management focus but we are still trying to work out some details, so I can’t give out too much, but we will have a second funding announcement coming out in the Fall of this year. >>Bill Bentley: It is also important to know that we are working in concert with Katherine Chon and Joo Yeun Chang who are my colleagues in the Immediate Office of the Assistant Secretary and the Children’s Bureau. So we are excited about learning more about what services and approaches work best with this population. >>Katherine Chon: Thank you Bill and Karal for the readout from the Family Youth Services Bureau - now turning it over to the Children’s Bureau. >>Rosie Gomez: Good morning, this is Rosie Gomez again. On September 30 of 2014, the Children’s Bureau funded a grant program titled, “Grant to Address Trafficking within the Child Welfare Population”. So, for this program, we funded 9 grants at $250,000 per year and it’s a 5 year project period. The purpose of these grants is to really continue the development of child welfare systems response to human trafficking. We really wanted to focus on infrastructure building and the multi-system approach with various partners. These partners included local law enforcement, juvenile justice, court systems, runaway and homeless youth programs, children’s justice act grantees, child advocacy centers, and other necessary service providers. The grantees are required to work very closely with child welfare agencies, but we understood in their planning that other organizations also had other expertise in trafficking so we wanted to open the application process to more than just child welfare agencies. We are pleased that the 9 grantees include in addition to child welfare agencies, universities, faith-based organizations, non-profit organizations, and courts. The 9 grantees are located in 9 different states; California, Massachusetts, Arizona, Washington, Florida, North Carolina, Louisiana, Maryland, and Connecticut. You can see a list of the grantees on our Children’s Bureau website, so we are very excited about the work that these grantees plan to do and we are really looking forward to learning how improve child welfare’s response to human trafficking. At this time we don’t currently have any open grant announcements. >>Katherine Chon: Thank you Rosie. The Administration for Native Americans is not on the call with us today but they do have an open funding opportunity announcement for their social and economic development strategies grant and starting in Fiscal year 2015, Native American community programs were able to put in proposals for anti-trafficking activities. Actually that started in 2014, so the current 2015 proposals are due March 4th, so next month. 2016 proposals are due March 4th of 2016, so for any stakeholders on the call working with Native American communities, please know that there are those deadlines for that particular funding opportunity. In terms of other future funding, please know that HHS has a funding forecast schedule that’s available online if you want to see what’s coming down the pipeline, and other federal agencies also support anti-trafficking programming and you can visit grants.gov to see what other opportunities are available. So, with that, I’m going to start us off with the question and answer period for the pre-submitted questions. We received about 14 of them, so I will read off the questions and defer to some of our program offices to provide responses. So the first question that we received was: >>1. Will the domestic funds only be used for children or adults as well? >>Karal Busch: For the FYSB funding, the funds will be used towards children and adults. Now as far as children, we don’t have a baseline number so we do have programs that are targeting teens and youth, but yes we will have funding for both children and adults. >>2. Will the domestic funds be used for domestic labor trafficking as well? >>Karal Busch: Yes, we’re not excluding these funds for just sex trafficking, so whatever services those victim’s needs, where they’re victims of sex, labor or both, they can be served as domestic victims. >>3. Will the child abuse discretionary funds be used to address sex trafficking and labor trafficking? >>Rosie Gomez: So yes. We are always interested in addressing both sex trafficking and labor trafficking, so our discussions will always plan to address both forms of trafficking.In the current program that we fund, states are addressing both forms. >>Do you mean with the current 9 grants, Rosie? >>Rosie Gomez: Yes. >>4. Why do the new bills on human trafficking not include labor trafficking, domestic servitude, and adult victims of trafficking? >>Katherine Chon: Back in January, the house passed 12 bills related to human trafficking and most of it was addressing child sex trafficking. So, generally our responses across ACF, I hope you’re getting the indication that we care to serve victims of all forms of trafficking, so whether foreign national, US citizen, or lawful permanent resident, victim of sex or labor trafficking, adults/children, or men/women our programs work to collectively serve victims of all forms of trafficking. The physical relation to all the bills that were passed in the House or any other bills that may be introduced in the House or Senate, ACF is not a legislative body, so what we do is execute the authorities that we have in enactive legislation. So we cannot comment on the nature of the bills that were passed recently, so I will kind of leave it at that. If you are interested in learning more about the legislative side, please contact your member of Congress with any specific questions you may have. >>5. Are these funds in addition to the FY 15 funds in the budget, in addition to the current funding available to non-profit organizations work the anti-trafficking arena? >>Michelle Patterson: So this is Michelle from ACF budget and again, I’ll just generally say that like all programs in the federal government that receive their funding through the annual appropriations process, you just have to wait to get the appropriations bill passed, which is never done in a timely manner but before you know the dollar value of the appropriation, just like in 2015, the program offices under the guidance of Katherine will decide once the 2016 appropriations bill has passed, how it will be implemented. That will include decisions that are along the lines of, is there enough money to fund brand new grants, can we do continuation grants as well, and all those decisions will be made once they’re aware of the amount of funding available. >>6. What is being done or will be done to proactively fight the demand that fuels human trafficking? >>Katherine Chon: So I mentioned, across ACF we have worked to integrate anti-trafficking efforts into various programs. We also have an HHS wide working group that meets on a bi-monthly basis so we can coordinate efforts with our health-related colleagues as well. Generally, at the federal level, there is the President’s Interagency Task Force to Combat and Monitor Human Trafficking and within that, a Senior Policy Operating Group and one of the purposes of that group is to coordinate and collaborate across multiple federal agencies. An example of that is, last January we released the Federal Strategic Action Plan on strengthening services to victims of human trafficking in the United States. It was a plan co-chaired with the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and here within the Department of Health and Human Services, but it involves more than a dozen federal agencies. I start with that because the federal government, broadly speaking, addresses demand in a number of ways. So obviously there are the law enforcement efforts on the prosecution end and with regard to demand related to labor trafficking, there is an Executive order on preventing human trafficking within federal contracting and federal supply chains and their regulations coming out. So both for sex trafficking and labor trafficking, the federal government is looking at it from a comprehensive perspective; prosecution, prevention, protection. In bringing it back to the Administration for Children and Families – in our efforts to raise public awareness and working with faith-based and community based organizations, we want to be sending out a comprehensive message and we need to address the issues of human trafficking from multiple perspectives. Are there any other program offices that wanted to add to this question? >>7. What funding will be distributed for prevention programming related to anti-trafficking efforts? >>Rosie Gomez: So as I mentioned earlier, our 9 grantees do have prevention components in their grants so that will help with the prevention part. Any funding we may get from the FY16 budget, we plan to use that for prevention methods as well and we discuss that a little bit later. >>Karal Busch: Within the Family and Youth Services Bureau, we have a Runaway and Homeless Youth program, so within that program we have several grantees nationwide who have been working to address trafficking prior to the actual FSYB funding, so those grantees continue to work both with Katherine’s team and FYSB’s leadership to make sure these young people have awareness in trafficking. >>8. What amount of funding is allocated for housing? >>Katherine Chon: In prior Fiscal years 14 and 15, the President’s budget reflected a proposal for demonstration projects around housing. The FY16 budget does not include a specific allocation for housing, but we are trying to integrate housing efforts within our comprehensive case management and victim service programs. For example: through the ORR Victim Services program, foreign nationals have access to housing, and the demonstration project that Karal mentioned through the Family and Youth Services Bureau, the comprehensive nature of services include provision of housing. I’ll turn it over in case FYSB or Children’s Bureau wants to add anything to that. >>Rosie Gomez: This is Rosie and I’m not sure if I have anything to add. >>Catherine Nolan: This is Catherine. We do have a grant concert call supporting housing, but it’s not focused on trafficking. But, it’s supportive housing for families who are in the child welfare system or at risk of being in the child welfare system due to homelessness or inadequate housing, but trafficking is not necessarily a focus. >>9. What are the funding opportunities to serve both domestic and foreign born survivors of human trafficking? >>With the current funding through FYSB for the comprehensive case management; that is just targeting domestic victims which we deem as either US citizens or LPR’s, however it’s very important to know who get turn away, so the current 3 grantees do have protocols in place to first get base line data, so that once its determined that a victim may not be eligible, they are referred out to ORR or the Office for Victims of Crime if they are a foreign victim. >>Maggie Wynne: So currently the Office of Refugee Resettlement anti0trafficking program funds about 5.5 million for direct assistance and case management for foreign victims of trafficking in the United States. We are putting funding opportunity announcements out this year to continue and to issue new grants for another 3 years. The case management and services are pretty flexible, so whatever the particular needs of the individual person are, they receive assistance because we don’t target funds to any particular category. >>Katherine Chon: I think the Children’s Bureau will probably incorporate their response in a later question that is coming up. A few other things I would want to mention is the Department of Justice Office for Victims of Crime also provides federal grant opportunities to serve both domestic and foreign born victims of human trafficking. There is also a lot that the Administration for Children and Families does. Outside of the dedicated trafficking programming Runaway Homeless Youth programs may be working with victims of human trafficking through their day to day work as well as Domestic Violence programs, the Administration for Native Americans, etc, so across our multiple systems we may be coming across working with survivors of trafficking; ust wanted to put that out there as well. >>10. What kind of anti-trafficking research is going on and how are these various streams of information connected, analyzed, and findings distributed? >>Katherine Chon: Well, we don’t have our Office for Planning, Research and Evaluation on the Budget Briefing call today. That is the part of the Administration for Children and Families that is leading our research and evaluation data efforts, but specific to anti-trafficking programs, each of our anti-trafficking grantees report data and there is an evaluation plan for those grants across the federal government. There are action items in the Federal Strategic Action Plan on how we are planning to strengthen data collection, research and evaluation efforts, so I encourage stakeholders on the call to reference that document for specific action items on coordinating across these efforts. >>11. What procedures are being put in place to ensure that all State organizations have the personnel in place to mobilize and respond to trafficking within child welfare systems? >>Rosie Gomez: So we are still having internal discussions about how to best support states, especially child welfare agencies and in implementing components of the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act for this year, however we do get additional funding in FY16. We hope to fund grant clusters focused on prevention, so those that will develop strategies to identity children in youth who are in care that may be at risk for becoming trafficking victims and developing strategies to prevent those children and youth from becoming victims of trafficking. We also want to put a focus on service grants that would focus on providing comprehensive services to children and youth who have already been trafficked and are in the child welfare system. We would like to use some funding to evaluate the grantees built capacity of the child welfare fields, and then incorporate some data collection research. I’m not sure, Catherine if you have anything else to add. >>Catherine Nolan: Just to caveat, echo Michelle, we have no idea if we are going to get this money or not. These are our ideas that we’ve put forward, but we just don’t if any of this is going to actually happen because we don’t know what the funding situation is. Just consider them ideas. >>12. Are small communities able to apply for anti-trafficking program funding? >>Maggie Wynne: We do have a regional program and 2 of our programs are national. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center functions as a call center for the US and territories. Our Victim Assistance Programs, we give to larger organizations that have the ability to subcontract with organizations throughout the US. So indirectly, they can benefit from the federal grants via assistance, but that wouldn’t work for direct assistance. Also, our 3rd program is the regional program and we do make awards to various entities throughout the country. We don’t have national coverage but in those locations they are going to focus on a comprehensive response to trafficking except for victims’ assistance. So they do the training and technical assistance, public awareness, direct outreach, and they also lead or actively support a local coalition, which can be a local law enforcement task force to help bring together and coordinate a multidisciplinary approach and response to trafficking in their communities, and that can be broader than the assistance to foreign victims. The coalitions should work on all forms of trafficking to all populations; labor and sex trafficking, foreign and domestic, adults and minors. >>Katherine Chon: Do any of the other program offices want to respond to this question? I think we’ve covered it in the previous questions in some way. >>13. What efforts are under way to train health care providers, educators, and parents on human trafficking? >>Maggie Wynne: Regional programs. We do this primarily, indirectly through our grantees. We have the National Human Trafficking Resource Center which has online training materials, documents, and PowerPoints. You can do interactive or live training as well as just get general materials. They respond to calls as well. The Trafficking Resource Center website is www.traffickingresourcecenter.com. And also our grantees do a lot of training and technical assistance in their areas to try to seek out potential intermediaries who could identify victims of trafficking. It will often depend on the region in which they are located. If they are largely in an agricultural region, then they might focus on agricultural outreach, migrant workers and those who are assisting; if they’re in an urban area, they might be focused on different sectors or locations within that geographic areas. We have done in the past, some webinars, and those are all save on the NHTRC website under trainings. >>Rochelle Rollins: In response to the Federal Strategic Action plan that came out last year, which recognized health care providers and educators as first responders, we developed in 2014, a 2 hour training called the SOAR to Health and Wellness. It stands for Stop, Observe, Ask, and Respond and we were able to implement it with the help of the technical working group last year. We were able to train 180 diverse health care providers across the country, and taking that too, we were able to expand it by working with the Department of Education to now have a module looking at and working on training social workers, counselors, and psychologists. For the work with the health providers, our partner is the Office of Women’s Health within HHH as well as the Office of Minority Health, in particular region 4. So we’ve trained in terms of the educators, about 450 educators in the past month. There is interest in expanding SOAR to work with the hospitals and so it’s a plug and play kind of tool that can be used for many different populations. The question about how to educate parents came up when we educated these social workers and counselors, so we are working with the National Association of Social Workers American Psychological Association who wants to train all of their members on human trafficking to talk about how to reach the parents and get into the schools, maybe through the PTA’s. All of this is in progress, so we started with the health care professionals and quickly expanded to educators. >>Katherine Chon: Rochelle mentioned the Federal Strategic Action Plan and there are a number of action items in there of how across federal agencies, we will be coordinating and collaborating on training efforts for targeted communities or providers and educators. So I would reference that for priority areas of collaboration within federal anti-trafficking efforts and then of course ACF, our 10 regional offices are engaged on a regular basis with the local community to provide training and connect community members and organizations with each other. And so, if you are not yet familiar with who your regional points of contact are, please be in touch with us, and that is also available on the ACF website which is www.acf.hhs.gov. >>So that exhausts all of our pre-submitted questions. Operator at this time we will open up the lines for open questions. >>Operator: Sure, if you would like to ask a question at this time, please make sure to unmute your lines, press *1 to record your first and last name when prompted and if you need to recall the question please press *2. >>Eliza Reock, Shared Hope International: Hi this is Eliza Reock with Shared Hope International and I just have some follow up questions to some comments made. When it comes to appropriations specifically for Native American programs, I was wondering, you said that they could apply starting in 2014, but have there actually been any appropriations for the community to specifically serve trafficking victims. And my second question is, in regards to the Federal Strategic Action Plan and some of the components and priorities. Is there going to be any updates, what goals have been reached based on the time proposed. I know we’re several years into it at this point. Thank you >>Katherine Chon: Well we don’t have a representative from the Administration for Native Americans here, but as far as I know, FY14 funding cycle, there has not been grants that have been funded to serve anti-trafficking programming that may be due to a number of issues but the proposals are not coming in; specifically to serve victims of trafficking, or maybe because it was a newer population added to the mix of different issue areas that communities could apply for. So we are trying to help get the word out the anti-trafficking community that this is available. And it is part of the social economic development strategies grant which serves a wide range of issues that the communities are facing so there is not a specific appropriation just on trafficking in Native American communities. In regards to the Federal Strategic Action Plan, as referenced in the final plan that came out in January 2014, we will be reporting later this year on progress for Fiscal Year 13 and 14 activities, so please keep an eye out for that and as soon as we have more information, we will share it with our stakeholders. >>Warren Yatter, Private Policy Center of Mississippi: Is there currently anything available for law enforcement and is DOJ taking the lead on that? >>Katherine Chon: The Department of Justice has multiple programming for training for law enforcement through their different divisions, so we would encourage you to visit the website for the Office for Victims of Crime, and I will kind of defer to Maggie from ORR to talk about law enforcement trainings to add more to DOJ efforts. >>Maggie Wynne: What I have hear about is the Department of Homeland Security through the Blue Campaign has taken on a submission to help not just to train federal law enforcement but also state and local law enforcement, and they will probably have more information about the availability and the location of trainings and how to access trainings on the Blue Campaign website and you can google Blue Campaign and it will take you there. There are other trainings that I’m less familiar with. I know that there is a federal law enforcement training center but I don’t know how much they open that up to state and local law enforcement agencies. >>Katherine Chon: Just going back to the Office for Victims of Crime, late last year or maybe early this year, they released an update guide for training task forces including law enforcement representatives, and that is also available on-line if you visit their website. >>Melinda: I was curious. I hadn’t heard of the SOAR curriculum. Is that available for use in communities or how do we gain access to that. >>Rochelle Rollins: It will be available. We just did the pilot in September and just received the final report this month, so it’s going through clearance and you can find information about it on the ACF website, End Trafficking, and we’re just starting our conversations with Stakeholders. We will be working to add CE credits to it in 2015, so the efforts are to make it better and broader. >>Melinda: So it will get out to teachers as well, eventually? >>Rochelle Rollins: Yes. It would get out to teachers eventually. We have not been approached by teachers for it, but we were approached by social workers and psychologists first. As we were training them, they said what about the American Counselor’s Association and what about students, so we want the lead to come from the Department of Education of how to reach that audience. >>Katherine Chon: Speaking of the Department of Education, they recently released a guide for schools on human trafficking which is available online as well. If you can’t find it at DOE, just be in touch with us. Actually, what we’ll do is, as a follow up to this briefing call, we’ll provide links to the registered participants to some of these federal materials that we’ve been reference to the call. >>Rochelle Rollins: So that tool is called, Human Trafficking in America’s schools, and we used that very press tool to train those psychologists and social workers in New York. They have a protocol on page 10 that’s phenomenal so we want to promote that. >>Melinda: That’s great. One quick question for Bill Bentley’s shop: Bill, will we be continuing to try to get all the Runaway and Homeless Youth programs trained and or certified in being able to serve victims of human trafficking through RHYTAC. >>Bill Bentley: Yes. As a matter of fact, we gave RHYTAC some additional funds this past fiscal year to provide training to our RHY programs referencing anti-trafficking activities and how best to work with this population. >>Melinda: Right. I just want to make sure that if we don’t have any kind of mandatory training for the basic centers, outreaching TLP and teen parents too. I think it would be important as we try to get the funds used in the most effective and efficient way using our existing residential program would be helpful, especially if we can build or establish good relationship with law enforcement moving forward. And also, someone needs to look at the issues that we have with actually housing these young people in states because the amount of money we get, even if it comes out, there are a number of very significant barriers to putting these kids in housing, whether it’s foster care or emergency shelters, so I would love to have a call to talk about some of that consistent work nationally. >>Bill Bentley: You are welcome. And we can certainly set up a separate call to have that conversation. That’s something that Karal can work on with Chris. >>Karal Busch: This is Karal with FYSB and I just want to follow up on Bill’s response to your questions. Melinda, as far as the grantees for Runaway and Homeless Youth programs, through RHYTAC who’s our framing NTA center for those of you that don’t know on the call, there’s a program that was started last year that called HTR3 which stands for Human Trafficking Recognize Respond and Respect so that’s a way for grantees to also get training, but as far as having an actual requirement through the funding announcement, that has not been done. >>Reverend Doctor Cheryl Anthony: Good afternoon, I am Reverend Anthony, and I’m a faith leader here in New York City, and of course this weekend our city is full of people coming for the NBA All-Star game, so we are having a sex trafficking nightmare here in our city as we speak on this call. My question is this: I heard Rosie Gomez say that there are 9 grantees, and I know that New York was not listed as one. Is there any specific program and training for the faith community here in New York? Specifically looking at how trafficking is going from one bureau to another bureau and one housing development to another. >>Rosie Gomez: This is Rosie. I would have to do some research about New York and definitely get back to you. I would also advise you to a faith-based organization that is part of the 9 grantees, Healing Place Serve in Louisiana. I’m sure they would be happy to talk with you about some of the work that they’re doing. >>Karal Busch: In regards to outreach for this agency. In New York, we do have a regional office who is doing outreach for human trafficking so you may want to contact the Regional Office liaison and her name is Bronia Ashford. >>Katherine Chon: We will send her information in the follow up email so that everyone has their respective regional liaisons. >>Maggie Wynne: I just wanted to add that the Anti-Trafficking office in ORR has a grantee sanctioned for families in New York that is doing the Rescue and restore program there. While they primarily have a focus on the identification and referral for assistance of foreign victims of trafficking, they are available to provide training or may be able to direct you to some of their partners who can assist in doing outreach to faith-based communities about sex trafficking in New York, especially during events. And the grantees are on our website with their contact information so that will be part of the follow up email. >>Bob Coston: Hi this is Bob in Colorado, and first I want to thank ORR to putting out free marketing materials for human trafficking. They are very useful. The question I have: Is there any consideration or thought around funding or providing technical assistance for electronic reporting requirements for runaways from placement for law enforcement and to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Specifically, is there interoperability with our current state staffing system with making the reporting smooth as far as reporting missing kids and reporting when they do return? So, is there any funding being set aside for technical assistance for that kind of electronic reporting? >>Karal Busch: This is Karal and we have a whole division within the Children’s Bureau that handles all the data systems including SAC, so I don’t know the answer to that, but when we get the list of questions together, I can certainly bring that back to our data team. >>Katherine Chon: There are provisions in the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act and language in there at least when it comes to child welfare responses to certain types of child trafficking to report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and there are references in there on some data collection within AFCARS so of course the Children’s Bureau is in the process of providing guidance on implementing that act, and so you may be interested in that legislation as well. >>Bob: My understanding is that only Florida has electronic reporting and they did add on their own, so I was just looking if there was any additional funding to support electronic reporting. That’s ok, it sounds like it hasn’t been worked out yet. >>Doctor Katarina Roseburg: Thank you for taking my call. I was wondering in regards to the school outreach initiatives that you mentioned, if there is opportunity for survivor voices if that is incorporated into that, because I’ve experienced trafficking in my public school and wrote a story about it in my book “Stolen”. I find that that’s very affected for children who have experienced this, to hear survivor voices. Next, how would small non-profits like Hope for Me be able to take part in that? >>Rochelle Rollins: Survivor voices are critical in my opinion and that’s what we heard with the health care professionals. For the SOAR that we launched last year, we used audio and video of survivors and our feedback was that going forward, we need to make sure we have in-person survivor voices as well. We had that when we trained in Atlanta last month, we had a survivor voice, but we did not have it in New York City. So, we hear you clearly and as we are working with the Department of Justice which has a database of survivors who are available for public speaking and events, we are collecting names and pushing that information to the Department of Justice OVC. So, I think that going forward you will see a lot more survivor activity in our SOAR efforts and also our Technical Working Groups that will be continuing their work on SOAR and other efforts. So, everything we are doing is survivor informed and now we need to it to be more in-person as well for every training. >>Roseburg: Yes, it’s very effective. I’ve done that in Miami Day County school systems and we’ve helped a lot of children. I’d love to be part of that if that’s a possibility. I am on the OVC speaker’s bureau. Is that the one you’re talking about? >>Rochelle Rollins: Exactly, you’re in the right place because what we are seeing for example: our Region 3 did a couple of trainings in Baltimore and DC and they used that OVC tool to push out that request and got a lot of respondents. >>Roseburg: Great. And then, there needs to be follow up with law enforcement. Is that component included in there as well? >>Rochelle Rollins: Yes it is. >>Dean Duncan: I’d like to recite some orderly options for funding for safe and secure housing for a term of 18-24 months for youth who are victims of trafficking who are not currently in foster care and can’t be found as victims of maltreatment because they are not abused or neglected by their parents or caretakers. >>Karal Busch: With the pending funding announcement, one possible option is a housing option, but we’re still looking at the funding for that, so that may come into place in the fall, but I’m not quite sure yet and Bill Bentley feel free to jump in on that questions as well. >>Bill Bentley: Karal, I think you stated clearly where we are at this point. >>Katherine Chon: So, thank you everyone for joining the call today. In closing, what we’ll do as a follow up is send an email listing out a number of the resources that we had referenced throughout the call. We’ll also be providing a recording of this call and posting is online in case you have any colleagues who missed the briefing and wanted to hear a recording of it. And one of the other announcements that I would want to make is, in January the Department of Health and Human Services in partnership with the Department of Education and President Lincoln’s Cottage announced a “WhatIWouldMiss” Social Media Awareness Campaign targeted for High school students and that campaign is in the form of a competition which comes to a close at the end of this month, February 27th. We will send out a link to that in this follow up email, but given that it’s Presidents Day Weekend, great way if you have a high school person/student in your life or organization, they may want to participate in that competition. Any other final thoughts from colleagues from other programs or the budget office…Ok so we’ll send out this email. Thank you to all the partners across ACF and organizations on the call. Have a great weekend!