Child Welfare Professionals Serving Child Sex Trafficking Victims: Changes in Knowledge and Self-Efficacy Over Time

Prevention of trafficking is legislated and funded through federal law, with victim services for child sex trafficking assigned to local departments of social services. Among child welfare workers, research has documented mislabeling, misidentification, misunderstanding of policy, and improper care for youth involved in sex trafficking, and pointed to a need for training of professionals. A survey of five years of classes of child welfare workers (n = 1,061) in departments of social services was conducted, measuring changes in the pre-training knowledge and self-efficacy workers arrived with regarding engaging with survivors of child sex trafficking. Correlations and regression analysis (controlling for gender, race, and years working in the field) showed that the passage of time was associated with markedly higher levels of pre-training knowledge by successive cohorts of workers arriving for training but not with higher self-efficacy in these areas. Professional development training for child welfare workers about child trafficking should deliver more advanced content, while expanding experiential training components that build self-efficacy.