By: Sarah Bendtsen and Christine Raino While a relatively small percentage of children referred to and served by child welfare are child sex trafficking victims, child welfare has an important and unavoidable role in responding to child sex trafficking. Reformed and tailored responses to child sex trafficking are critical for ensuring proper responses to system-involved […]
Wisconsin Senate Bill 245 Testimony
Shared Hope International has been working in Wisconsin, across the country, and internationally for over 20 years to guide and support appropriate responses to protect survivors, hold offenders to account, and ultimately prevent the crime entirely. 11 years ago we launched the Protected Innocence Challenge project (i.e. State Report Cards) to assess the status of […]
Bridge to Success– National Foster Care Month
Bridge to Success May marks National Foster Care month, prompting an annual focus on a system response that impacts nearly half a million children and youth in the U.S. at any given time. During a normal year, advocates and policymakers highlight promising trends, practices, and challenges for supporting foster care youth, including those transitioning out […]
States’ Laws Say “Kids Are Not Prostitutes.” So Why Are They Still Being Punished?
During the 2019 legislative session, nine states passed[1] critical legal reform measures to protect child sex trafficking victims from being prosecuted for prostitution, commonly referred to as “Safe Harbor” laws. However, as first pointed out in 2017, not all “Safe Harbor” laws actually insulate child sex trafficking victims from a punitive response for engaging in […]
How to Make an Ocean Rise – Celebrating Cyntoia Brown’s Release
“Ripples. When you create a difference in someone’s life, you not only impact their life, you impact everyone influenced by them throughout their entire lifetime. No act is ever too small. One by one, that is how to make an ocean rise.” –Danielle Doby, Author Eight months ago, we learned that Cyntoia Brown, a […]
