Every year, thousands of vulnerable children within the child welfare system become victims of human trafficking, often without detection or intervention. What if existing functional assessments utilized by child welfare systems could be leveraged to identify youth at risk thereby enhancing prevention strategies? A recent article in a special issue of the Child Welfare Journal tests that approach.  The article published in December 2024 entitled “Understanding the Characteristics of Child Victims of Trafficking in Child Welfare and Developing an Innovative Approach for Screening Youth at Risk” was authored by Nadine M. Finigan-Carr, Amelia Rubenstein, Neil Mallon, Wana Jin, and Terry V. Shaw from the School of Social Work at University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Given the severity of child trafficking, innovative approaches for identification and timely intervention with at-risk youth are needed.  Dr. Nadine Finigan-Carr and the UMB team use the Child Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) as the basis for identifying relevant risk factors and vulnerabilities of child victims of trafficking.  Their team developed and tested a CANS-based Child Sex Trafficking (CST) Screener using completed CANS assessments within their SACWIS for a subset of youth with confirmed incidents of child trafficking.  It is important to note that for a majority of youth in their historical sample had experienced child welfare involvement prior to being trafficked.  For the youth in their sample, the CANS-based CST screener accurately flagged 82% of youth. 

This groundbreaking approach has the potential to eliminate the need for additional child-trafficking screening tools.  Potentially reducing the documentation burdens and training requirements on the child welfare workforce, addressing inherent bias, and reducing the potential for misidentification of risk   

To learn more, please check out the full article/study by accessing the link below and adhering to the prompts within the CWLA Child Welfare Journal. https://community.cwla.org/store/viewproduct.aspx?id=24900486