TCC

Human trafficking is a $150 billion dollar industry globally. Human trafficking transcends all races, social classes, demographics, and genders. There is no population exempt from the threat of traffickers who are motivated by greed and are driven by their quota. Traffickers lack respect for basic human rights and prey upon the most vulnerable in society causing their victim’s unspeakable physical and psychological trauma.
Child sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) are major public health issues in the USA and word wide. Victims are estimated to be in the millions and are predominately women and children. 33% of these trafficked victims are children, who are more vulnerable to this manipulation and exploitation. It is estimated that 88% of trafficked children will seek medical care which creates opportunity for healthcare providers to recognize, treat, and provide advocacy for the complex needs of CSEC youth.

In 2021 the Institute for Shelter Care conducted a national study of justice professionals to ascertain a better understanding of the prevalence, characteristics, and challenges associated with domestic minor familial sex trafficking. The study was based on over 3,500 child trafficking cases nationwide between 2018-2021. This session will present the findings from that study and offer recommendations for action.

In this session, you'll receive an overview of the Washington Association of Child Advocate Programs 30 hour training curriculum used to train new advocates and staff GALs across Washington State in dependency cases. Approved by the Administrative Office of the Courts in March of 2020, this curriculum has been used to train nearly 1,000 new advocates and staff online since the start of the pandemic. Please come with suggestions for improvement, areas where you feel advocates could use additional training or support, and your questions about volunteer child advocacy in general.

Digital evidence presents a challenge for criminal investigators largely because it exists as an amorphous, invisible, and yet omnipresent silent witness in nearly every case. The hardest aspect of digital evidence is being aware of its existence and its potential significance. We all know cell phones are likely to contain text messages and internet browsers are likely to contain internet history, but what about the more obscure sources of digital evidence from computers, mobile devices, wearables, IoTs, and cloud sources? This lecture focuses on less well known digital evidence sources and artifacts. The kind of evidence that wows juries and proves cases. The lecture creates an increased awareness of the unusual artifacts to provide additional critical evidence in future investigations.

This session will focus on the importance of school stability around mitigation of harm of removal. Education is a critical component to positively impacting the lives of students who experience foster care. These students face significant educational challenges. On every academic measure, outcomes for students in foster care are lower than the outcomes of all other student groups, including students experiencing homelessness. Research shows that frequent school moves are a barrier to academic success, while school stability is linked to improved graduation rates.
Success in school and supportive relationships with teachers, school staff, peers, and friends offer a positive counterbalance to the disruption inherent in foster care placement. In recent years, federal and state legislation has focused on educational stability for students in foster care, as well as collaboration between child welfare and schools. This session will provide an overview of those laws and highlight the successful partnerships between government and non-profit agencies related to supporting students in foster care.

Trauma affects the entire family – shouldn’t our treatment do the same? This means treating trauma systemically with the entire traumatized family instead of just the child. And while we as clinicians can make some progress individually, lasting change is unlikely when the child returns to the same unchanged traumatized family. Join Dr. Scott Sells, the founder of the evidence-based Family Systems Trauma (FST) Model will teach the following 3 family systems trauma tools for assessing and treating the entire traumatized family and not just the child in a new way.

In 2021, several grantees were awarded funding to expand child advocacy services serving American Indian/Alaska Native communities through funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. This session will explore real-world organizational strategies employed by these grantees as well as others in the field to enhance relationships, coordinate, and improve services for tribal members accessing CAC services. This session will provide an opportunity for small group dialogue to occur with other participants about this topic.

These sessions will describe the changes in the brain and the chemical and genetic changes in the body of children exposed to trauma. Science describes the changes in every aspect of the brain. The chemical changes in the body and the brain impact the function of the child who then becomes the teenager and then the adult. The science that supports the process of how to address these changes with daily trauma informed care including in the home, school and work environments will be reviewed with specific recommendations for the entire lifespan of a trauma impacted person.

This presentation addresses the common trademarks of the preferential child sexual predator and characteristics and behaviors that this person may have. The workshop will also address victim characteristics and behaviors that make the child more vulnerable. This training will identify the problem of child molestation and provide investigators with insight of what these children experience and how that knowledge can assist in better understanding the crime and thus providing a better investigation into the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrator along with providing important strategies about investigating the suspect and the crime scene are covered giving the investigator important tools needed for a successful prosecution.

Working as a team to achieve a common goal can be challenging, especially when each member of the team has their own role and agenda they are trying to accomplish. Throw in child abuse, complex trauma, and just the overall daily combat of morally challenging work - tensions are bound to arise. In this workshop, participants will learn the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach to child abuse investigations. Additionally, the content will cover challenges, barriers, and strategies for overcoming them by working effectively together as a team to combat the child abuse epidemic.