SEEN is Changing the System
The SEEN multidisciplinary response model now serves as a framework for how local, state, and national organizations develop their response to commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC). Just 3 years after its inception, SEEN was recognized by the Ash Center at the Harvard Kennedy School among the top 50 government innovations. Since that time, SEEN’s model has been included in the California Evidence-based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare, described in the Institute of Medicine’s Confronting Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Sex Trafficking of Minors in the United States, profiled in Blueprint: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Domestic Sex Trafficking of Girls by the Center on Poverty and Inequality of Georgetown Law and featured in the National Children's Alliance Unifying the Response to Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children site.
In Massachusetts, SEEN has not only been able to support over 1800 high risk and exploited youth since it began, but has also helped to inform Massachusetts policy and law to create a victim-centered safety net for exploited youth.
Since 2014, SEEN has partnered in a 5-year federal grant from the Administration for Children and Families (Health & Human Services) to increase Massachusetts’ capacity to identify and respond to child trafficking. Together with partners My Life My Choice, the MA Department of Children and Families, and Northeastern University, SEEN is providing training and technical assistance to help create children’s advocacy center-based multidisciplinary teams to support exploited youth. This initiative has spanned the state and now every county in Massachusetts has an established multidisciplinary team and CSEC coordinator to respond to exploited youth.
SEEN Training & Technical Assistance
Support to End Exploitation Now (SEEN) provides training and technical assistance locally and nationally regarding a multidisciplinary response to commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC). In 2018 alone, SEEN’s training efforts reached over 1700 individuals.
SEEN Trainings:
- Introduction to CSEC & Guidelines for Responding to Suspected Exploitation
- Developing a Multidisciplinary Response to Child Trafficking
- Discipline-specific Responses to High Risk & Exploited Youth
- Responding to Runaway Youth & Youth Missing From Care
The CAC can customize trainings to the specific needs of individual agencies and organizations.
For more information regarding training options please contact the CAC’s Training Program Manager, Erica Chepulis at Erica.L.Chepulis@mass.gov.