Protecting Child Trafficking Victims
A child-friendly space (CFS) is an environment designed to help children feel safe, calm, and comfortable while they are interacting with practitioners. Child-friendly spaces play an important role in the protection of child trafficking victims. They are critical to supporting trauma-informed interactions and safeguarding the rights of child trafficking victims.
Our model for developing, improving, and maintaining a child-friendly space is the 4S approach.
Space – making the physical space where practitioners interact with children a safe, child-friendly, and positive environment.
Staff – ensuring that all practitioners who interact with child trafficking victims are trained to understand child trafficking, child protection, trauma-informed practices, children’s rights, and child-friendly interactions and communication.
Standards – having protocols and policies in place to guide all interactions with children and upkeep of the space.
Sustainability – maintaining child-friendly spaces over time and in response to any changes or challenges that arise.
The Warnath Group offers professional education and advisory services in the development of child-friendly spaces, in the form of research and resources, in-person and virtual training, and technical assistance from design to implementation. We have worked in diverse settings to successfully develop child-friendly spaces for child and adolescent trafficking victims. This includes the facilitation of frontline working groups and multidisciplinary teams and providing training and technical assistance for practitioners to put protocols and practices into action.
We encourage you to contact us with questions or to learn more about our peer-to-peer professional anti-trafficking training and technical assistance packages.
Download the Warnath Group Practice Guide on Developing Child-Friendly Spaces for Child and Adolescent Trafficking Victims.
Child trafficking victims are uniquely affected by trafficking experiences due to their age and inherent vulnerability. This requires that special and additional measures be implemented to ensure the safety and well-being of child trafficking victims at every stage of their lives after trafficking.
1. Identification and immediate first steps
Conducting victim identification and screening interviews in a child-friendly space, with trained and sensitized practitioners and according to established standards, is key in creating a sense of safety that can lead to disclosure of harm.
2. Protection and support
Offering protection and support to child trafficking victims in a child-friendly space can aid practitioners in ensuring the best interests of the child.
3. Non-criminalization and non-detention
Trafficked children should not be criminalized or held liable for any offenses that they were forced to commit while trafficked. If they are not able to return home, they should be placed in appropriate child-friendly accommodation.
4. Supporting children as victim-witnesses
Child-friendly spaces should be utilized in prosecutor offices and courtrooms to protect and support children who are serving as victim-witnesses.
5. Recovery and reintegration
Child-friendly spaces can promote the longer-term recovery and reintegration of child trafficking victims, not only in the places where they receive services, but also in the places where they rebuild their lives – from classrooms to community facilities to youth centers.
“Child-friendly spaces are an essential component to holistic victim-centered and trauma-informed care for child survivors of human trafficking.”
In 2023, Warnath Group partnered with the U.S. and Costa Rican governments to establish five child-friendly spaces at the National Child Welfare Agency (PANI) Office in the canton of Santa Cruz, Costa Rica and two child-friendly spaces at PANI Office in the canton of Corredores, Costa Rica.
In 2023, Warnath Group partnered with the U.S. and Jamaican governments to establish four child-friendly spaces managed by the Ministry of Health and Wellness, the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA), and the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s anti-trafficking unit in Jamaica.
In 2023, Warnath Group partnered with the U.S. and Jamaican governments to establish child-friendly spaces at the Victim Services Division (VSD) of the Jamaican Ministry of Justice in Manchester Parish, Jamaica and in Portland Parish, Jamaica for child crime victims and their families to receive therapeutic services and prepare for the experience of testifying in court.
In 2023, Warnath Group partnered with the U.S. and Jamaican governments to establish child-friendly spaces at the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) locations in Kingston and Montego Bay, Jamaica.
In 2023, Warnath Group partnered with the U.S. and Jamaican governments to establish a therapeutic, multi-function, child-friendly space for child and adolescent trafficking victims at the Ewarton Ministry of Health and Wellness Child Guidance Clinic in St. Catherine Parish, Jamaica.
In 2022, Warnath Group partnered with the U.S. and Jamaican governments to establish a child-friendly space for child and adolescent trafficking victims at the police station in Falmouth, Jamaica.
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