For 37 years, Covenant House has been a refuge for youth experiencing homelessness. When we started in 1989, we didn’t know it, but we were also providing critical support for youth who were survivors of human trafficking – both sex and labor trafficking.
Back then, we didn’t know what we know now: almost one out of every eight of our young people were human trafficking survivors. At the time, youth advocates did not have the tools to even assess whether a young person was a survivor in a way that did not force them to relive that trauma.
This began to change in 2017, when a Covenant House New Jersey team partnered with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York to better understand the prevalence of human trafficking among homeless youth and develop the best way to screen for it.
That study – Recognizing Human Trafficking Among Homeless Youth – introduced the QYIT training tool. The impact of this tool has been immense. As Kaitlin Zedalis, Associate Director of the Covenant House Action and Research Tank (CHART) puts it, “QYIT was the first scientifically validated screening tool for sex and labor trafficking and it’s gone on to be used all over the country.”
QYIT is a simple, four-question screening tool that can, with a high degree of confidence, identify whether a person has been trafficked. Importantly, the person administering the screener does not have to be an expert in human trafficking. This makes it accessible to law enforcement, public health workers and educators, all of whom often have direct contact with youth who have been trafficked.
Since 2023, The CHART team has been providing QYIT training in NJ, and in states throughout the US.
“We rolled out critical training for hospital, law enforcement, and social services personnel, who often are among the first professionals to come into contact with a victim of trafficking. Since we started, CHNJ provided training to more than 2,500 of these professionals,” Kaitlin reports.
Training for social service providers includes a human trafficking 101 module to help them gain a deeper understanding of the various forms trafficking takes, and the training for law enforcement, accomplished in conjunction with the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice and Homeland Security, focuses on the relevant laws and trauma-informed interviewing.
QYIT has proven to be an invaluable tool in our work to support survivors and continues to inform the work we do at Covenant House New Jersey and with our partners in the state and across the country.
If you or someone you know is a victim of human trafficking, please call the New Jersey Human Trafficking Hotline: 855-NJHT-TIP (855-654-8847). To learn more about the work of Covenant House New Jersey in helping victims of human trafficking, click here.
