Human Trafficking Research Lab @Millikin

This summer I was contacted by the Illinois Department of Human Services, Office of Adult Services and Basic Supports, Bureau of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Human Trafficking about our research and asked to join the Joint Human Trafficking Work Group. I attended a few meetings online and then at the end of September we had an in-person planning workshop in Springfield and Chicago. The purpose of the work group is to draft a Strategic Plan for Human Trafficking Victim Services & Funding. The group is is focused on creating a systematic approach to looking at how the state of Illinois responds to human trafficking and create systems that assign responsibility to agencies to develop protocols and training to better our responses to identified HT victims/survivors. They wanted to include all stakeholders such as law enforcement, service providers, state agencies, prosecutors and make recommendations through legislation and statutory change. It has been interesting to rev...

Over the course of the last few weeks, I have been working on analyzing respondent data for a survey sent out to members of the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Taskforce as part of the final assessment for the DOJ task force grant. As a Human Services/Psychology student at Millikin, I have analyzed and researched a fair amount of numerical data. It has been an enlightening process to learn how to analyze the data of answers to open-ended questions. At first, I felt challenged by this experience. Eventually, I came to feel grateful for the opportunity to learn something new which will help me as I continue on to graduate school. The survey included questions as to members' overall satisfaction with the task force and suggestions for improvement. The questions were all aimed at finding better ways to assist victims/survivors of human trafficking. While some members were not pleased and did not fully agree with one another on how to better serve this vulnerable population, there we...