Understanding and Supporting the Needs of Sexually Exploited Girls Involved in Child Protection Services: The More You Know, The Harder It Is.

Many students who are starting out in Salem State's research laboratory course wonder what an end product looks like.  One recent group of students (Ellen Calhoun, Melissa Geoffroy and Dominique Gutierrez) developed a qualitative research proposal to learn more about the experiences of child protection workers engaged in case management work with girls who have been sexually exploited. Sexual exploitation is often referred to as prostitution. This group of women were drawn to this research question as a result of their case practice with girls and boys who had been/were currently "in the life."

They successfully completed the implementation of their project, have evolved their paper into a manuscript that will be submitted to a juried journal and will be presenting their work on October 2, 2009 at the 6th Annual Conference on Prostitution, Sex Work and Human Trafficking.  While completion of the project is the goal for our research laboratory courses - you never know how much you might get into it!  Be open to possibility!

Short abstract: Sexual exploitation among adolescent girls is increasingly prevalent in child protection work. Identifying and working with victims of sexual exploitation is a significant challenge for child protection services (CPS) workers. Little is known, however, about how CPS workers understand this population and how this work impacts their personal and professional lives. Utilizing an exploratory, qualitative approach, interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of fifteen CPS workers in an urban New England city. Policy and practice implications relate to the need for clinical supervision, self-care encouragement and the development of CPS practice models that are strengths-based and trauma-informed.