For the past three years, TNOYS has worked closely with the Office of the Texas Governor’s Child Sex Trafficking Team to build Texas’ capacity to provide high-quality services for Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Youth (CSEY) survivors. In our work across the state, the TNOYS team has provided training and technical assistance to youth-serving providers and advocates, research, and community engagement, and we are involved in several statewide workgroups on this issue. Through our work and partnership with the Office of the Texas Governor, TNOYS aims to ensure that all youth services providers have access to the tools and resources they need to identify, prevent, and respond to CSEY and to best serve youth survivors.
Given TNOYS’ successful track record working with vulnerable youth populations and supporting a diverse network of member organizations, our latest collaboration with the Governor’s office is the facilitation of a series of free virtual trainings for youth-serving providers on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation-Identification Tool.
Commonly referred to as the CSE-IT, the Commercial Sexual Exploitation-Identification Tool is used to identify and screen youth and children who experienced commercial sexual exploitation or are in situations that make them vulnerable to exploitation. Evidence tells us that in some cases, a youth could be exploited for two to three years before being identified and referred to services. The CSE-IT helps mitigate the chances that a youth goes unnoticed.
The tool removes various biases like race or economic status and recommends that anyone ages 10 or older get screened regardless of background or socioeconomic status. Truthfully, any organization or individual working with any youth population should be trained in CSE-IT and use the tool to effectively protect their youth and provide them with the most adequate services and resources.
Originally developed by the WestCoast Children’s Clinic, the CSE-IT has been adopted by the Office of the Governor in Texas to help youth-serving organizations across Texas better serve youth and ensure they are doing all they can to protect them.
TNOYS’ CSE-IT training series occurs monthly at no cost and consists of a three-hour virtual training session that requires active participation and engagement. Throughout the training, participants will learn how to use the CSE-IT and embed the tool within their existing processes, dive deep into understanding complex trauma and potential indicators of CSEY, and discuss the importance of collecting and tracking consistent data on CSEY in Texas. Participants will receive a certificate of completion verifying that they are certified users of the tool and earn three continuing education credit hours.
Ann-Charlotte Proffitt, TNOYS’ Director of Practice, oversees the CSE-IT trainings for TNOYS and strongly encourages that any organization working with any youth population certify their staff as CSE-IT users.
“Often sexual exploitation of children and youth goes unrecognized and unnoticed – you can’t solve a problem that you don’t see,” says Proffitt. “A lot of providers are not necessarily dedicated solely to serving youth who have experienced sexual exploitation, so it’s really important for everybody who is serving youth to have that knowledge and understanding and the ability to screen because there could be youth coming through their doors who have been exploited. Using the CSE-IT takes away a lot of that guesswork and bias to prevent a situation where you don’t identify the situation until it gets so bad to finally become noticeable.”
TNOYS is hosting free monthly CSE-IT Trainings for the remainder of 2021 during the following dates:
- Thursday, September 23: REGISTER HERE
- Thursday, October 28: This training is open to all participants of the 2021 TEHCY Program Summit. If you attended the summit and would like to attend this training, please email info@tnoys.org
- Wednesday, November 10: Registration opening soon
- Thursday, December 2: Registration opening soon
To register for an upcoming CSE-IT training, please visit TNOYS’ events page. To learn more about CSE-IT or learn how to request training for your staff or organization, please contact Ann-Charlotte Proffitt at aproffitt@tnoys.org.