Statewide Action Team Shifts Perceptions, Improves Outcomes For Exploited Youth

The California Child Welfare Council’s Commercially Sexually Exploited Children (CSEC) Action Team is a critical component of a groundbreaking state program that is changing perceptions and is working towards improving  outcomes for youth impacted by CSE statewide. TheAction Team, and its accompanying Advisory Board of lived experience experts, was launched with the support and leadership of NCYL.

The CSEC Action Team, established in 2013, is a multidisciplinary body, made up of substantive and lived experience experts. The Action Team aims to grow awareness, share promising practices, identify issues and challenges facing youth impacted by CSE, and collectively come up with policy and practice solutions. . NCYL has staffed and served on the leadership of the CSEC Action Team since its creation.

To date, the Action Team — with more than 400 community and system partners — has been instrumental in shifting public perception on CSE and the youth who are impacted by it, uplifting emerging practices, centering survivors and lived experience experts, and developing policy and practice guidance to improve the way youth impacted by CSE are supported in California and beyond.  

Action Team in action

• CSEC Action Team meetings have focused on a range of important topics, including: 
• CSE within Native American communities;
• Innovative housing/care models for youth experiencing CSE;
• Adultification of Black girls;
• The needs of expecting and parenting youth who are experiencing exploitation; and
• CSE impact on boys and young men

At meetings, CSEC Action Team members are provided with opportunities to learn about relevant topics and promising practices, and to develop policy guidance, and recommendations. Past outcomes have included:

• Development of a model Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) template to encourage participation in the state-funded CSEC Program. [link to INITIATIVE 4.3]
• Production of a series of guidance on harm reduction, including specific guidance for social workers, probation officers, law enforcement, caregivers, and the courts; and
• Recommendations on how to improve data collection regarding identifying and serving youth experiencing CSE;
• Guidance on cell phone policies for youth who are in out of home care;

The CSEC Action Team works in tandem with an Advisory Board of lived experience experts. 

The Action Team is open to the public – participation is welcomed and encouraged. To attend the next quarterly Action Team meeting, please register here.