Listen to our new Voices from the Field podcast with Steven Jella, Associate Executive Director for San Diego Youth Services. We discuss how his organization went from, “90% in-person services to 90% remote services in just 5 days” at the start of the pandemic, and how he has focused on preserving his workforce over this past year.

Today we launch The Foresight Initiative: an inquiry into how our field is rising to meet this moment of extraordinary disruption and uncertainty. Starting with a short survey we will learn what adaptations have worked, what practices have lost relevancy, and what innovations are being planned. Learn more about our new initiative and please take our survey!

The difficult realization at the core of our services for minor victims of trafficking is the acknowledgement that however nefarious and immoral the actions of traffickers may be, they are successful at meeting the needs of youth through their own manipulative and exploitive means. The only way we can compete with them is to demonstrate to victims, from the very first encounter, that we can help them in a compassionate and therapeutic manner.

Almost anyone who knows someone in middle or high school sees signs of the stress that is part of adolescence; I’ve talked with young people who cut, whose hair fell out in patches. But in these pandemic months, our stress has been as self-contained as everything else