January 31, 2023

Doing More to Identify Victims of Human Trafficking

I’m Julia Einbond, Associate Executive Director, Covenant House Action and Research Tank (CHART). CHART is a relatively recent addition to Covenant House NJ and enables us to better identify and serve victims of human trafficking and youth facing homelessness through 

  • Revised and relevant models of care
  • Meaningful contributions to regional and national dialogs

As we come to the end of Human Trafficking Awareness Month, I’m proud of the work we’re doing here in NJ to identify and work with trafficking victims.  In NJ, we served 149 trafficking victims over the last fiscal year.

Julia Einbond, Associate Executive Director, Covenant House Action and Research Tank (CHART)

Early Screening for Identifying Victims of Human Trafficking – QYIT

We are also moving the dial across North America through education and training to identify victims of human trafficking.  We have developed four questions to screen for lifetime experiences of human trafficking, called QYIT – Quick Youth Indicators for Trafficking. The questions have been empirically tested with a “yes” to at least one of the four questions, having a sensitivity of 87.1% for identifying trafficking; and a specificity of 76.7%. (Yes, we love data!) You can also find our complete research paper, “Screening for Human Trafficking Among Homeless Young Adults”, here.

With your support, we continue to conduct research in the field with our next article to be published in the Criminal Law Bulletin in the next few weeks. You can read more about our work in the field here.