Texas' Strategic Plan for combating human trafficking throughout the state finishes with the fifth pillar, Provide Support, which uses past knowledge and experience to give human trafficking victims the support they need to recover from their trauma.
Texas is one of the states with the most human trafficking numbers, but it lacks the proper amount of supportive services for human trafficking victims, the plan states. Increasing support services will help address trauma and challenges of the victims.
To support human trafficking victims, the Strategic Plan gives eight strategies.
The first strategy is to train stakeholders to identify victims earlier and more often. This will ensure that human trafficking victims receive the care and support they need once identified, according to the plan.
"Most survivors report that they had contact with members of the community, especially health care workers, during periods of exploitation, that did not result in identification of their victimization," the plan states.
Increasing awareness and being able to understand the risk factors of human trafficking will help stakeholders be able to identify victims more often. Health care providers and other human trafficking organizations should be trained in identifying a current or previous victim to ensure the victim can receive the help they need.
The next strategy is to build continuous care for victims by training and using existing care systems, the plan states.
But to be able to provide this care, victims need to be recognized.
"Victims will be most receptive to an intervention when their current state of readiness is recognized by the people who are seeking to help them," the Strategic Plan states.
Once they are recognized, they can be helped by receiving access to services and programs to support and care for them.
Training stakeholders in trauma-informed practices is the third strategy, which will help provide support to victims and survivors of human trafficking, according to the plan.
Ensuring that stakeholders have the proper training in trauma will make sure "support systems should meet victims 'where they are' when providing services and care," the plan states.
The fourth strategy is to develop programs for advocacy and case management. When a victim is first recovered, the time is tenuous and will call for a focused and empathetic stakeholder to support the victim. Stakeholders must be careful, because recovered victims can be very vulnerable and shouldn't be held against their wills, according to the plan.
Developing these programs will help stakeholders interact with victims according, without making them feel they are being held against their wills or causing distress.
It's also important to understand all victims are unique and will have individual needs, which is the fifth strategy. Developing services that will be able to be individualized is an important step of supporting victims.
But residential services and education programs should also be able to be individualized to ensure victims receive the best support available, the plan states.
The next strategy is to make sure the services are effective at providing support.
"Because services for human trafficking victims are relatively new when compared to services to other crime victims, evaluation and continuous improvement are of utmost importance in meeting the needs of human trafficking victims," the Strategic Plan states. "All organizations providing services to victims should evaluate their services with uniform and/or customized performance data, including quantifiable outputs and outcomes."
This means services should be evaluated to make sure victims are receiving consistent support that is tailored to their needs.
But giving support to human trafficking victims will be hard to do without the necessary fund, which is where the seventh strategy comes in. Identifying funding and considering waivers is important to meet the needs of victims, the plan states.
The 2020-21 budget for Texas set a record for the amount of funding that went toward prevent human trafficking, but funding needs to be continually increased in order to knock down financial barriers and provide the necessary services and support.
The final strategy to providing support is to develop local care teams that will help coordinate crisis recovery, long-term support and service delivery.
"The goal of care coordination is to ensure effective victim-centered and trauma-responsive care for minor victims by all members of the care coordination team (CCT) while supporting the investigation and prosecution of exploiters," the Strategic Plan states.
