A new grant program from theU.S. Administration for Children and Families is trying to untangle how to develop services for domestic victims of human trafficking. The most recent round of grants focuses on rural areas, where runaway and homeless youth, Native Americans and survivors of violence and abuse are among the high-risk populations for trafficking.
Young people can be a target for traffickers because they have run away or are homeless, or because they become homeless after being trafficked, said Katherine Chon, director of theOffice on Trafficking in Persons at the ACF.
“We know human trafficking is a problem across the country — in rural, suburban and urban settings,” Chon said.
In North Dakota, providers say they’ve seen an increase in trafficking connected to oil boom towns, places where the social services safety net is not usually in place.
As part of the grant program, one group, Mountain Plain Youth Services/Youthworks will look specifically at how to help youth ages 13 to 21 who are at risk for trafficking, have been recovered from trafficking or identify as being trafficked.
[For more of this story, written by Sarah Barr, go to http://jjie.org/rural-communit...-trafficking/152392/]
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