Sec. 2. Findings
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/bill/113/s/1518/is/section-2·A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
Congress makes the following findings: Recent reports on sex trafficking estimate that hundreds of thousands of children and youth are at risk for domestic sex trafficking. The risk is compounded every year for the up to 30,000 young people who are emancipated from foster care. The current child welfare system does not effectively identify, prevent, or intervene when a child or youth presents as trafficked or at risk for trafficking. Within the current foster care system, many young adults are housed in congregate care facilities or group homes, which often are targeted by traffickers.
Within the current foster care system, children and youth are routinely denied the opportunity to participate in normal, age or developmentally appropriate activities such as joining 4–H and other clubs, participating in school plays, playing sports, going to camp, and visiting a friend. A lack of normalcy and barriers to participation in age or developmentally appropriate activities, which are endemic features of the current child welfare system, contribute to increased vulnerability for trafficking, homelessness, and other negative outcomes for children and youth in foster care.
The latest research in adolescent brain development indicates that young people learn through experience and through trial and error and as part of healthy brain development young people need to take on increasing levels of decisionmaking through their teenage years. In order to combat domestic sex trafficking and to improve outcomes for children and youth in foster care, systemic changes need to be made to the current child welfare system that focus on— the reduction of youth in congregate care facilities and group homes; greater youth interaction with case planning while in foster care; improved policies and procedures that encourage age or developmentally appropriate activities for children in foster care and permit more opportunities for such children to make meaningful and permanent connects with caring adults; and with regard to domestic sex trafficking, improved identification, prevention, and intervention by the child welfare agency in collaboration with the courts, local law enforcement agencies, and other social service providers.