Rethink Resources

I’ve been thinking a lot about sustainability questions for community efforts working with youth in the sex trade. In the time that I’ve been doing this work, in one way or another for more than 15 years now, I’ve seen a number of organizations working with people in the sex trade start and started one myself. And I’ve seen a number of them close. All experience serious struggles in sustaining their efforts.

Now the serious struggles are over many issues. But one I want to address today is on the need for trained staff. It’s really difficult for programs focused specifically on youth in the sex trade to find staff people who have previous training or experience on the issue.

You can attend years of college and receive a BA and graduate degrees in the humanities or social sciences fields and never hear one word about the lives of people in the sex trade. You can attend certification trainings in rape crisis, domestic violence, child abuse, HIV and STI prevention and not hear more than a passing mention of youth in the sex trade, if that.

Some training coordinators are making an effort to include information – but let’s be realistic – it’s often 30 minutes out of a very full schedule, a few statistics gathered from the internet. It’s not the comprehensive training that staff need to effectively support youth who are in the sex trade. So most people don’t even have the opportunity to become trained.

After spending many more hours interviewing and screening potential staff people who usually lack actual experience with youth in the sex trade – programs hire and hope new staff will pick up the necessary expertise on the job. Now I believe strongly in experiential learning. But I know many programs have had to let go of a lot of staff who are convincing in interviews that they can take on the challenge and relate to youth in the sex trade but in real life couldn’t even come close.

It wears down both independent organizations and programs that are sponsored by larger organizations to not be able to find reasonably trained staff. In fact it stops some efforts from even getting past the planning stages. Participants are far more likely to leave programs that don’t have staff people youth can feel confident in. Youth in the sex trade deserve way more.

I think this is a solvable problem. One of my main hopes in creating Rethink Resources is to expand the training possibilities for adults who want to work with youth in the sex trade. More than that, I want to demonstrate how complex and substantial the training can be – it’s far more than a few moments to talk about running away or at what age someone gets involved.

In the future I picture a much more comprehensive approach to training with access to training manuals, youth directed evaluation efforts, and consistent meetings with honest discussions about what practices work and which ones don’t.