Why Kids Run: The Foster Care to Trafficking Pipeline

Teresa: Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. In today’s episode, “Why Kids Run, The Foster Care to Trafficking Pipeline,” I speak with Arturo Garcia, doctoral researcher at the University of South Florida.  Now, child sex trafficking has received much needed funding, public awareness, and policymaker attention over the past decade.

But as programs have developed to serve these kids and youth, what do we really know about what works to prevent and intervene successfully? What adds to the risk of child sex trafficking?  And why, when we think that kids are finally safe in foster care, do so often they run back to the very people who are abusing them?

Arturo’s application of payments Behavioral analysis is a new way of looking at these questions. As we try to understand child sex trafficking, we need to understand the unique vulnerabilities tied to foster care and how we can more effectively work with these children and youth.  I know you’ll be as interested in this conversation as I was. Please take a listen.

Hi Arturo, welcome to One in Ten.

Arturo: Hi, Teresa. Thank you for having me.

Teresa: So, I want to start at the beginning, which is how did you become interested in a sort of examining prevention intervention strategies in CSEC, and especially as it relates to runaway behavior?

Arturo: I’ve been a case worker for a while. When I first graduated from my undergrad, with an undergrad in psychology, there’s very limited availability as to where you can go as a professional, and I wound up being a case manager with DCF here in the State of Florida.

Then I was also volunteering with the program, which advocates for children that are in the dependency case system. And because I was fairly young when I had just started, I had just graduated. So I was 23, 24. I was closer to the age of those older teenagers that were running away from their parents or from their foster care parents or even their parents.

And so I just naturally just got assigned to those cases because I related with them better. A lot of them would run away, whether it was with their girlfriends, boyfriends, or, or they were trying to visit the family members. And so I’ve always been interested as to, you know, well, If you have what perceives to be everything you’re in your household right now, what will make you run away?

And, you know, some of them come back and you could see how, when they will come back, they will come back as a completely different person that, that really got me like very interested and see, okay, well, what happened in that time that we were gone.

Teresa: So, you know, it’s so interesting because I asked this question of every guest and, you know, what really drives the answer is this fundamental curiosity about something they’ve seen or heard or wondered about.

And often from personal experience, and so it’s so interesting as a young caseworker having this experience of this person comes back transformed and not always in a good way and wondering, why am I suddenly seeing this acting out or this behavior? So. You conducted the scoping review, and I have a feeling there are a few of our listeners who might not know what that is.

So, to set the table for everyone the same as we dive into the conversation, can you just explain that in layman’s terms? What are we talking about?

Arturo: From what my research really showed is that I initially wanted to do interventions. And so you go to any, any literature search that comes up with human trafficking, and you have a million articles that come up.

You do anything that has to do with human behavior analysis and human trafficking, zero articles come up. So there is a misconnection there, right? So it’s kind of just more about, okay, so how do I ensure that I can actually what I’m looking for, which is person comes back from, but in a way something happened.

What is being provided to them? Because again, going back to make a caseworker, I know that there’s. Interventions are being implemented because I will refer out my youth to these interventions. So, it just, um, just finding out what a scoping view was. It was again, giving you the opportunity to ask a question, a general question of like, so what is happening to kids out there?

What treatment is being provided to them without the limitations of what evidence-based treatment is being implemented to them?

Teresa: So interesting. And I mean, one of the things I think is really helpful for practitioners about scoping reviews is we all have limited time, right? And so one of the things that a study like yours does is really encapsulate or help sift through lots of material to discover patterns in it.

And so. When you conducted your own scoping review, where did you find that most research had been focused?

Arturo: So, most of the research has been on the prevention aspect of it. So, most of the literature is going towards the how do we prevent people from experiencing exploitation or CSEC. And so, of course, it makes sense when you step back and you think of what the reason why this is happening is because we can’t implement an evidence based intervention because that means I would have to make sure this kid gets abused to see if my intervention has been effective or not.

So, because of that, a lot of the literature is on the prevention aspect. But what I found very interesting in my research is that it just showed that A lot of stuff can fit into a prevention strategy from disseminating to professionals to doing a specific like trainings to professionals that are out on, you know, like boots on the ground, like police officers or, or medical practitioners.

Then, there was also just the general like, okay, well, let’s identify doing an actual assessment with the individual that I experienced exploitation. So, it just, I guess my limit to just show that. There are many things that could fit into a prevention strategy. It just makes it a little bit more, having the ability to be more flexible on when you’re looking for, that you can like really figure out that like, we are doing different things. It just doesn’t look the same all of the time.

Teresa: Well, I think in this podcast, we’ve had a lot of prevention conversations. And I think one of the challenges when you’re looking at prevention overall is just, it’s hard sometimes to narrow down to the thing that made the difference when you’re doing prevention, right?

Because you’re trying to look for the thing that actually did nothing. So, I can see the challenge, like if you’re trying to figure out how can we best have a holistic approach and a good way of addressing prevention and intervention wise within CSEC, it’s just challenging if virtually all the literature is on the prevention side.

So, when you took a look at the intervention side, let’s turn to that for a second, but thinking about trends and patterns, what did you see?

Arturo: So, I guess, um, to answer this question, I got to take a step back. So early in my fourth year for, um, my discipline is behavior analysis. So it’s not typical social work criminology, so behavior analysis.

And so for the most part, when you hear of a BCBA or behavior analyst, you think of somebody that’s working with a kid with autism. And that’s never been the case for me. I’ve always worked with youth that are either in detention facilities and group homes and in foster care So when I’m looking at the interventions, I am looking more as to What is what are we actually implementing that shows an objective change from before the intervention was?

So when I’m looking at the interventions, I am looking for a specific marker something that was changed at that moment That would show a change like an objective pattern change or not. We started looking at the intervention, we wanted to make sure that it was either a program that was implemented to the, to assess the specific changes towards that kid, whether it was like run away or not run away, or, or if it was like specifically identifying a way that the kid would come across in their local community, or just the different ways that they could intervene with that kid, because, you know, like, uh, one of the bigger things are like, when we kind of help the community, we should take a community approach rather than individual approach.

And so, that is kind of like what our interventions were showing is the same thing is that there are kind of these three general areas where intervention can go in. It’s either the specific, we are helping you identify the services that you need and we help you make that connection with the services.

So again, that community approach, or whether we provide the service, the specific service, which is like that, that individualized therapy. Or, whether it is a combination of the two, right? You know, think about like a program that provides a targeted case manager. They might provide you with a specific service, like let’s say housing, but then they also provide you advocacy for, oh, we also need employment.

Let me make my contact with employment. Let me make my contacts with, you have a dependency case open. So let me help you find an attorney or whatever it might be.  So that’s kind of like what our data was showing, just the different patterns of one person being able to intervene with the individual.

Teresa: One of the things that I noted and that you talked about a little bit in your paper is that there’s this intersection between child sexual abuse and commercial sexual exploitation of children, and yet that didn’t seem to show up in the literature as much as you were expecting. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Arturo: Yeah, so the from what I noted is that when it comes to the distinction of experience and exploitation compared to a sexual abuse is that you can have. Sexual abuse without having exploitation, but you can’t have exploitation without having sexual abuse. And when you’re, when you have a general approach, especially when those older articles, um, their general approach was more as to we’re treating this as a, as an instance of abuse or sexual abuse, instead of we’re teaching this as a way to prevent exploitation.

Which one of them is like a system like exploitation is a criminal system. There’s a lot of areas that go into place where, uh, sexual abuse can be one instance and it can be like, it was somebody that’s close to you, or it was something that like you got abducted and it happened once and we treat that approach or again, the exploitation being more of this guy, an ongoing thing.

You don’t get exploited once you’re going to exploit it on a duration of time, not an instance, um, approach, which again, that’s what I’ve noticed on the literature from abuse, exploitation.

Teresa: It’s so interesting to me because there’s a growing body of literature around CSEC, and there’s a large body of research on CSA. So if, in looking at the CSEC research, even though we know that child sexual abuse is a reliable contributing factor to a child or a teen later, or even an adult later being exploited, then, you know, I am curious about what you draw from the fact that these seem to be really very different research pathways.

Arturo: I think if I were to just come up with one specific answer, it has to do with how easy it is to, and to be one over the other with the sexual abuse. Although it can be a pattern, it can happen over time, multiple times, it’s not as a criminal accusation. There’s no additional things that are going around.

So, one of them is the abuse, but the other one is more of the whole system, the whole perspective of like, if we think of just a, an exchange of goods, which, which as bad as it sounds, like, and if you would think of an exchange of goods, I’m placing a value on something. And then that thing is worth as much as I want to give it value to.

And then, I am selling that in the market. And so now we’re one by teaching them, but Hey man, this didn’t happen. They take sexual abuse. We got to make sure that you’re supporting all of the other aspects when it comes to exploitation. This is involving their entire lifestyle from getting a job. So I’m controlling the money that comes into them from having contact with the community, right?

So, you have a cell phone, but because I’m paying for yourself. Or from, like, you have these people around you, but those are the people that I’m allowing you to be around. So, with the abuse, you’re meshing them into the environment and you’re abusing them on the side. With exploitation, this is the only thing that it is.

This is a system, this is kind of like everything around you has to do with being exploited.

Teresa: It’s an interesting point you’re making, which is one that I think maybe we don’t think about enough. With CSEC, which is the all-encompassing aspect of it, that this is not something that happens to you, this is the entirety of your existence, essentially, and identity, and at that point.

So, that is really interesting in terms of what that might mean for interventions. I am wondering, you also noted that there were limited articles that really targeted the very population most likely to come in contact with CSEC victims. Again, you know, it’s one of the things that piqued my interest about it. I’m like, well, that’s very interesting. Why do you suppose that most of the research done hasn’t really targeted law enforcement, CPS, educators, and those folks who are most likely to honestly need to understand the findings of it?

Arturo: I think what happens is that for my experience as a case worker, there was a new system that we needed to implement or there was this person that came around and they taught us how to run or how to conduct the screening tool, whatever it might be and so on. We would go through the training we learn how to conduct or how to ask these questions Right how to be able to ask open questions or close questions How to you know, like make sure that we’re not placing blame on the victim or just the way that we’re approaching asking questions And so on It’s more of the, uh, there’s applied stuff that is being done, but very limited of that is somebody sitting back going and doing the empirical part of it, doing the analysis to it.

So, my advisor interested me to get into applied video analysis. Her name is Dr. Kimberly Crosland, and she’s done a lot of research on youth that run away from foster care. And so, I read one of her articles and I was like, that’s so interesting. I see the applicability of it, but how come that’s not making it to go to Kissimmee, Florida, where I’m applying, you know, when I have kids running away, this is showing that there’s effectiveness to some extent.

They’re showing that there is a systematic way of doing it. And so I think that’s like where we all in general can do a better work of advocating to the state or advocating to the county or advocating to local agencies and saying, Hey, I know this is not. Like coming down from whoever, but there might be a systematic way of doing this.

And the benefits are these and the drawbacks of not implementing them. So systematic is that we can ask these additional questions we can ask. So, what is being involved? Avoiding placing victims on a vulnerable position where we’re constantly re victimizing them or constantly asking them stuff, so just having that systematic way of it, although it might exist, there’s very few empirical research that at that point have been published on or to show what the works that would be done out there.

Teresa: It’s an interesting point you’re making because I think that one of our frustrations is that we want our Children’s Advocacy Centers to be doing evidence supported work. Where there’s a paucity of research, it’s hard to do evidence supported work, right? Because you’re always going, well, I heard about this program over here who did this, or I heard about this program over there, but you want to have a level of confidence that if you’re going to invest in an intervention, that it’s likely to be effective for the population that you want to use it on.

So, I definitely fully agree and support the idea that we need to pair research and practice. Your paper also noted, though, that one thing that is promising is multidisciplinary treatment interventions really looking at things in a less siloed way? Can you just talk about, you know, both from research and just from your own practice, why does this feel so promising to you?

Arturo: Yeah, I’ll start with my practical part. So, what we would have like monthly or bi monthly MDT meeting, where we would sit down with, with the, their advocates for detention, their advocates for the child advocates and the caseworkers, the private investigators. So, we will have this meeting of a bunch of different people that work with the youth.

And so, it was our time to tell the judge ordered this kid to do a hundred hours community service. Well, he also hasn’t finished, you know, drug therapy or, you know, he goes missing for long periods of time. He comes back and he’s delayed six months from school. And so being able to all sit down and come up with a program or a system where, okay, well, you take care of this.

I’m going to take care of that. We’ll make sure we find someone for this. But if it weren’t for that kind of like collaborative work, then there’s a lot of information that’s missing. So, we go up to court and we would say, well, this kid needs, needs a tutor. And then, somebody will jump in and say, well, I have a contact to a tutor.

Had you told me, I would have been able to get you in contact with that tutor, with that mentor, with that additional support that our agency tends to work with a lot. And so, from the applied version of it, I saw it’d be super effective. I saw it. And at that moment, I was in my first, second year of my master’s program in applied behavioral analysis.

And I was very much like, oh, hey, so the behavior analysis, I think we can help with certain other things that like some of the stuff that I’m learning, some of the stuff that I think will be super helpful. And so, then I became an advocate for that as well. And so having all of that collaborative work really seemed to like put the kids ahead if they were falling behind, there was already a team supporting that we which goes again to the sexual exploitation in how it’s like in all Kind of encompassing on victimization.

So, if, if you have no income, you’re more likely to run away to get quick money. But instead, we support you where we can help you find a job, we can help you find a important job outside of school. If you’re failing in school, you’re more likely to make it uncomfortable at school. So you’re more likely to run away from school.

So, if we put on those additional supports at the school. If there’s something you like to do, like, like theater, or do you like to be in a sport? Well, how do we make sure that you are able to go play basketball? You know, let’s see your grades. Okay, cool. Let’s make sure that your grades are up.

So, having a lot of answers to a question We haven’t asked yet because we don’t know those questions exist was really, really helpful for at least the youth that I work with And so being able to show that in the literature, it’s been like being able to find a few of those articles that have done that.

And it’s like, well, I’ve done this. I did this back in 2013, 2017. Why am I not seeing an article until 2022? So, stuff like that was very interesting. It was exciting to see.

Teresa: That’s exciting. I mean, you preach to the choir here. We love multidisciplinary teamwork. But the other thing that I was thinking about as you were talking is that in a lot of ways, what you’re trying to do is replace this sort of toxic system that kids have been involved with one that’s healthy and supportive and that can integrate them back into their community, which I think is so important. I do want to talk a little bit now about foster care and running because I think that this is an area that’s really interesting.

And, I think so many CACs who’ve become more involved in the area of CSEC, they report that the frustration of their own multidisciplinary teams with running behavior is an interesting phenomenon. Let’s back up for a minute.  Arturo, can you explain to me kind of the unique vulnerabilities that come with foster care or how it might even contribute in some ways, not intentionally, of course, but might contribute in some ways to kids becoming involved in CSEC?

Arturo: So, going back to the idea of when foster care is really good, it, it provides you the support that you need in the areas that you need them to. But, um, you, and you start thinking of when you have placement disruption. So you go from living for your parent or your parents, whatever that situation might be, whether it’s wealthy or not, whether living in a clear home or living in a nice house or whatever it might be.

When you get moved from living with your parents to a different place, you, um, chances are you are being moved to a place that’s out of your school district or out of the places where you’re being provided healthcare or out of the local area where you have like friends and family members that cannot provide that additional support.

So, the idea that, that you go from this one placement to where, where you haven’t all of this additional support to whatever level there might be, because of course, you’re not involved in foster care because you had to decorate his life. That there were obviously deficits, but that deficit that you had was yours, which was your constant.

And so, when you’d be moved to a new area, when you meet me, move to a new school, to a new dentist, to a new doctor, to, to a new sport scene, whatever it might be, you start to look at everything outside of everything inside of dad. Kids life, your needs are increasing because whatever you had met for as much or as little as it was, those needs are no longer there.

And so, when you go from living across the street from your family members to now you live two hours an hour away from them, you’re going to miss them more because you don’t get that access to them as much. And same thing to being able to go to a pediatrician that knows you, that has been seeing you for the past two years, for however many times it might have been, to now you go to a new person and this person not only does not know you, but they tend to be always dealing with kids in foster care. So the connection with them is not as profound as it might be with other youth. So, when you’re thinking of what CSEC does is that they treat vulnerabilities by giving them, I’m going to fill in that gap that you have. And so, when you have 20 gaps and I give you 17 of them, that is better having three needs that are not met compared to having 20 needs that are not met, you’re more likely to fall into that cycle of their CSEC abuse.

And so, that’s the approach that they take towards foster care. It’s not that foster care, it could be better, of course. We, we all, we can all give a hundred reasons why foster care is good or is not good or whatever it might be. But the more needs that an individual has, the more likely that they are to fall victim to sexual exploitation.

Teresa: It’s such an interesting insight. Because I think when people think of foster care, they’re like, oh, you know what, you know, the child’s needs are met. But to your point, their relationship needs, there’s a growing deficit, right? All of these cumulative losses, the loss of neighbors and doctors and dentists, as you were saying, school connections, those kinds of things, then the ones closer to home, friends, family, all of that, and the cumulative weight of that can drive kids in to CSEC because, as you say, there’s someone who could step in and say, I’ll be your friend, I’ll be your boyfriend, we’ll be your family, like all of these things.

And, it feels like a gain to these kids at the time. You know, that kind of connects to this running behavior, because I think,  again, I think there were a number of aha moments in the paper, but I think that one of the things I really liked was the attempt to try to explain this, because I will just say, and I’m sure this was your experience too as a caseworker,  professionals get very frustrated with that behavior.

You know, they’re like I had picked this kid up 10 times, you know, the same kid, I put them in the best foster family we’ve got, these are the nicest people in the whole world, they ran again, and by the way, stole the mom’s purse on the way out, and I know you’re laughing and smiling because you’re like, this is how it happens.

So, for folks who are like, in that place, where they’re like, okay, I am worn with this. What is all this running about?

Arturo: Going back to, again, my discipline being behavior analysis. So, behavior analysis is about identifying the principles that are surrounding the behavior, the environmental conditions, right?

And so, taking that perspective, there is a reason why we run, right? So, it’s either the reason is we want to something or we run away from something. And so going to the idea of being placed on foster care, there’s so many deficits. There could also be a lot of aversive situations that are making you more likely to run away from those situations.

Whether it’s being bullied or whether it’s like now you became placed into the spot and I was super uncomfortable for you So, you kind of want to escape that or again go into the idea of well, I want to run back to my mom I want to run back to my friends. I want to run back to my community So, I think um when I’m taking the perspective of behavior analysis again trying to identify why kids are running away from without placing the blame of, oh they just want to run away because they want to eat drugs or because they want to be see a boyfriend or girlfriend or you know, so thinking of, yeah, that might be the reason for it, but there’s other variables that might be very much in place that we can then implement.

So, if it’s, you run away to gain access to your family members, then we can do, we can schedule meetings where your families, if we run away because you’re doing really bad in school. So, because you have that learned helplessness of every time I show up and no matter what, I’m going to get an F. Okay, cool.

Well, let’s give you a tutor so that you will be, you’re able to get those additional services in school on top of, you know, we, we could. We’ve talked to the school and figure out if there’s another thing that we could, but we won’t know unless we’re taking this kind of like holistic approach, like everything surrounding you is going to be the reason why you run to or away from something.

And so, that was very much what I was looking for when I was, um, looking at the literature. It’s like, okay, so what can be observed and measured of what’s being implemented? So, saying that somebody feels better is not as subjective as saying this multidisciplinary team was not there before. Now it is.

Whatever they do, it’s an addition of something that decrease their needs, which also decreased the need for running away.

Teresa: Let me just say that, one of the things that I really appreciated was I think that in my experience, We spend a lot of time on the running away, like away from something. What’s happening in the foster home, what’s happening at the school, whatever, right?

I don’t know that we spend as much focus as we should on what they’re running to. Like, what are they trying to access? What need are they trying to get met in the way that you’re describing it? Which is an interesting addition to the conversation. Because clearly, they are trying to get something that like all human behavior is purposeful, right?

It’s not just like randomly nilly, right? So that’s the foundation of your field is this idea that behavior is purposeful, and you have to take a look at it. So, I think that alone is an interesting insight.  What I also like is when you hear team members or professionals feel frustrated with these kids,  At some point, this running, I think, starts to feel like defiant behavior, and then there’s a certain amount of victim blaming that starts, and, well, they got themselves exploited again, because, again, after we told them, they still ran, and so, trying to shift that mindset is so critically important, because, You want the professionals working with kids to be empathetic.

You want them to, to not go down the path of like somehow a kid did something that caused this. And so, I think that this reframe around needs, right? What are they running to or from? What behaviors right before or after that we can do something about pivots the conversation away from the kid and their misbehavior.

I’m doing air quotes for those of you who are listening. And, it pivots it to there’s an environmental context we’re talking about, and what are we doing about that, and what are we doing about the very concrete needs that they’re trying to get met, and yes, maybe they’re not making good choices about how they’re going about that,  but it’s not mysterious, which I think is how a lot of people think about trafficking especially, and other forms of commercial sexual exploitation, it’s like, It’s a mystery why this you know, a 15 year old is running back to their abuser.

Well, it’s not a mystery if that’s where all their needs get met, right?

Arturo: Exactly. Yeah, 100 percent.

Teresa: So, just really interesting. I have to tell you, I just, I really appreciate the practical nature of this too, because it gives us a place to kind of evaluate our own programs, you know, when we think about in this Children’s Advocacy Center world, we have a standard that now has been created, a standard of practice I’m talking about that now has been created around CSEC.

And so, one of the things that I’m thinking about is how does this align to this? You know, is there enough focus on the kind of behavioral interventions, really, we should be paying more attention to? You know, I found this all very interesting. I’m wondering what the reaction of others have been to the publication itself. Has it been like I have been like, this is so exciting, or has it been something else?

Arturo: I guess it would have to be on which side of it. So, we’re thinking of behavioral analysis. Um, there hasn’t been a publication on behavioral analysis that has to do with human trafficking. I think, as just as a general in our field, we tend to stay away from these more trauma, behaviors, right?

So again, my advisor, she’s done some research on child welfare as well as running away, but apart from that, it’s very limited to those that have actually involved with it. And, that I think has to do with thinking of behaviors that have to do with like being exploited or being abused. It’s not a behavior, right?

A behavior is what a reaction you took but then it makes it sound like you’re blaming the person like you got abused because you did this and that which is Like that fine line that a lot of people are kind of like concerned about, you know, like going back and forth, I’m not blaming anybody.

And so, when I went and I was writing this paper, I had, obviously I have collaborators that helped me, you know, come up with some of the behavioral analysis part of it as well. And so it was always going back and saying like, okay, the way that, that you’re making the sound, it sounds very robotic or it sounds very much like we’re playing something, but where it’s not that it’s more of a describing the kid as a, this is my bubble and what’s happening in my bubble. My bubble is shifting. How does that shift in my bubble making me modify my behavior in whichever way. So, it’s not a, I’m blaming you. I, it’s more of a, I’m placing an eye on everything that’s surrounding you. And so, when it comes to behavior analysis, there’s been people that do like it.

There’s been some people that are very interested by it. Every time that people read it, they’ll reach out to me and say, oh, this is so interesting. I’m so glad that somebody’s talking about it. But then there hasn’t been more like, oh my God, what are we going to do about it? So, what I’ve been focusing a lot in my doctorate program is that I’ve been trying to enmesh myself into criminology to say, Hey, there’s another field out there that can help you guys.

I’m willing to play too. I promise you that we know what we’re talking about. And so, when I go and I speak with the one on ones like me and you’re having this conversation, people are like, oh, that is so interesting. That makes so much sense. But then the going out there and starting to like, like getting the word out there of the paperwork hasn’t been as much as I wanted it to, but the people, once they hear it, they’re like, oh yeah, no, this is a very unique or new way of thinking.

Something that’s been there for a long time, you know, there’s been a lot on gun safety or being abducted or, you know, um, on poison, like poison control, not to continue poisoning stuff. So, the literature is there. There just hasn’t been that clear connection. And so, I think where my experience come in, you know, of working with kids that run away and seeing those times like, okay, so I understand what you guys are saying.

I also understand where these people are saying, so let me see if I can write it this way. And so, again, as people read it, as people come across it, they’re very interested by it, but it hasn’t been like a, he was like, oh my God, let’s all do this now.

Teresa: Well, I think that is always the challenge of, like, translating research into practice. But I also hear you saying that while some people were excited, some people might have been a little touchy with the implications of it too. And that’s a natural feeling, I think. If we’re going to work with kids, you know, we do have to be willing to assume the responsibility for the programming they get because they don’t choose it themselves, right?

We choose it for them. So, I think that, you know, we should maybe be a little less touchy about, questioning what we’re up to when we’ve got these kids in our hands. I have a couple of other questions. So, one is, based on everything you’ve said, you’ve got this audience of child abuse professionals listening to you right now. If you could wave a magic wand and have three wishes. What is it you would want child abuse professionals to do differently with these kiddos?

Arturo: So, I think thinking putting back my social worker hand by thinking of the applied portion of it Is that when a kid runs away or when a kid gets in a fight in school when a kid is using drugs They’re not doing it to fight you.

They’re not doing it to cause harm to you. And I feel there’s a lot of times where we’ll take that very personal. Like, I mean, I literally been working with you for six months. I got you this great home. I got you this great school. I got you this great tool. Why would you run away from this, man? So, taking that so personal does affect kids.

And so, thinking back as to behavior, you know, running away from or running away to, that’s the idea of we do everything to either get a social consequence, added or getting social consequences removed. So, if I give you a reaction because you ran away again, I’m giving you additional attention. And if you ran away to get my attention, I’m giving you everything that you’re wanting to.

So, whether it’s the good job for coming back or I miss you so much. Why will you run? That’s still some attention. It just looked a little bit different, but it’s still giving you attention to where, oh, well, I give you all this stuff. I’m no longer going to call you. I’m not going to follow up with because you ran away because you ran away to get away from stuff.

Whether that’s me. Yeah. And now, because you come back, I’m like, nah, man, I’m not going to work anymore. I’m giving you what you wanted to, which is the removal of state, the removal of my attention. And so I’m thinking back as to every time a kid wants or youth wants when they come back, don’t give them that reaction.

Don’t give them just think back as to this is a patient that’s trying to communicate with you. They don’t know how to communicate. They’re doing what they believe is going to get your reaction, whether it’s to add attention or remove the attention. And so I think thinking back of that, As a practitioner, that’s my first wish as a practitioner.

So, remember that these are people trying to communicate with us. They just don’t know how to communicate properly with us. Um, my second wish is, honestly, is being open to the idea of change without making it so difficult to get to that change. So, um, and what I mean about that specifically is that if you think of the way to break into any centers, it’s by having a connection with someone that’s willing to advocate for you when you go into that place.

I’ll give you the perfect example. So right now, there’s this project that we’re doing with a runaway housing program that they provide services to individuals that are trying to reintegrate into society. And the only way that I got into contact with this is by knowing the professor that during one of our TiP lab meetings in the USF, I’m trying to get in person research lab that mentioned, hey, does anybody want to help me do some data analysis?

And it’s by me saying like, yeah, cool. I’m going to help you then meeting the organization. And then now they’re going to say like, Hey man, cool. Behavior analysis. I see what you’re doing. This is so cool. And him being so open, same thing with the TiP lab being so open to have someone outside of the discipline, come in and help and bring in my own expertise that I’ve had to knock on a lot of doors to have one of them open.

And so, being open to listen to someone that might look a little bit different.  And they still have an idea with them all being the same as what are we can do to make the life of these individuals better and, um,  yeah, making it a little bit easier for those of us that are working so hard to say, like, I can play, I promise you I’m nice, you know, so that idea and my third wish is, I guess this is more as to just in general, like it’s tough hearing somebody’s story, you know, It’s very difficult to see how they’ve experienced all their stuff and even your own experiences won’t get you to that point, but how sometimes it just because of how limited we are on certain things We can help them as much as you want to.

And so, we’ll do as much as we can. And it was like, sorry, man, I can’t do anything else. If it were a little bit easier to be able to provide those services, if there was a little bit of a easier time to be able to connect to different people, to be able to do that multidisciplinary approach that I don’t have to know every single agency in Florida for me to be able to look up something and say, you might not know me, but I have somebody that I believe you can help that connection is very difficult to make.

And so, the more you stay in one spot, the more you work with the people around you, the more people around you are going to get to know you. But then if I want to, if I moved to Texas, I’m going to have a hard time setting up that initial, the last 10, 15, 20 years of experience that I have, because I’m new, they don’t know me.

So, if there was a way to make that connection of, regardless of my experience, being able to connect with other agencies to be able to work together with people without that additional learned history, I think that that would also help a lot.

Teresa: I love the three wishes. And as the saying goes, from your lips to God’s ears, I hope they all happen.

I also would just say for our listeners, CAC folks, there’s a huge network of you all around the country and you serve kids from all over every day, you know, to the point that Arturo is making, if you could smooth the pathway, not only for kids when they get transferred to you, but also for professionals when they do.

I think it can make a lot of difference in getting good workers up and going quickly, unable to help kids, which is what we all want. Well, is there anything else that I should have asked you and didn’t? Or anything else that you wanted to make sure we talked about today?

Arturo: So yeah, I think I just kind of have to do the typical, like, this is what I’m working on kind of thing.

So, this one paper, the, um, the scope review, it is that initial step of making that connection between human trafficking and behavioral analysis. So, this is one of the series of articles that I am working on for my dissertation work. And just keep an eye on this stuff. Yeah, I’m going to be, you know, sending out this, the articles I had to do about the application of behavioral analysis, like that behavioral focus approach to the, this other field, such as abuse, exploitation, you know, trauma.

So, I’m working on that stuff. That’s again, just my dissertation. And so, this is the first of a series of papers that I have coming out for this.

Teresa: Well, when you get them published, come right on back and talk about them, because I think this is really interesting.

Arturo: Oh, I would love to.

Teresa: Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I know that our listeners really benefited from it and certainly had a few light bulb moments of my own. So, thank you so much.

Arturo: Thank you for having me. I loved it.

Teresa: Thanks for listening to One in Ten. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. And if you’re a fan of the show, please rate us wherever you listen.

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