Providing Strengths-Based and Community Supported Care for Trafficked Minors
By Shenoa Rose Jamieson, CPNP, SANE-A, SANE-P
Being a minor is a vulnerable time of life and sometimes the adults in a young person’s life fail to keep them safe. This can lead to children and adolescents experiencing chaos, stress, and trauma. Trauma is defined as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience; clearly, being trafficked is traumatic. Trauma is not just physical or sexual violence. It could be a loss of safety, perceived threat, homelessness, incarceration, medical/mental health diagnoses, discrimination, or unsafe neighborhood.
Trauma is based on the perspective of the survivor and people are much more than the trauma they have experienced.
As professionals we spend much of our time identifying and responding to stress and trauma. What we also need to be doing is focusing on supporting individual, community and societal strengths that build up coping strategies and a healthy response to trauma. It’s the same important work we have been doing but with a new, thoughtful approach.
Change, chaos, and stress are constants in life and therefore natural conditions of it. Agents of change include the individual’s strengths for coping and community and societal assets.
This fundamental shift in thinking brings into focus an individual’s ability to cope as the variable, instead of the stress itself. And let’s be honest, as humans we all deal with stressors with varying levels of successful coping strategies. Obviously, these ideas apply to us as well as those we serve. Change, chaos, and stress are delt with along a continuum; they might be avoided, defined as a non-irritant, managed or overcome, lead to tension that is subsequently managed (delayed management), or lead to unsuccessfully managed tension. Our coping strategies and our community and societal strengths have impact on how and where we move along this continuum of responses.
As health care providers we must lead a paradigm shift from asking “What is wrong with you?” or- “What happened to you?” to asking
“Where do you want to go and how may I help you get there?”
Specific recommendations for engaging youth through a healing-centered lens include:
- Avoid judgmental comments
- Listen empathically
- Do not push for disclosure, information, or trust
- Offer resources and information if requested
- Thank the person who has shared part of their story with you