Safe Harbor Protocol Guidelines

Developed to meet the needs of communities desiring best practices to draw upon during the protocol development process, as well as professionals and agencies lacking community protocols and guidance on how to address child and youth sex trafficking. The protocol guidelines consist of recommendations and resources to support multiple types of professionals in identifying youth who have experienced sex trafficking.

The resource included was originally published in 2017 and republished in 2020 with updates incorporating feedback from a wide variety of stakeholders. The protocol guidelines include eight “foundational” chapters on crucial topics, 16 discipline-specific chapters with guidance and insight in each chapter, and four “next steps” chapters to help communities begin the process of developing and implementing their own protocol on addressing youth sex trafficking.

Note that this protocol was not developed with Improving Outcomes funding but was shared by the Minnesota Improving Outcomes grantee. We included it because we felt that it qualified as a potentially useful resource to other Improving Outcomes grantees and states working to address child and youth trafficking.