The FOCUS (Finding youth, Outreach, Comprehensive assessment and immediate services, Unified long-term services, and Service evaluation) Project is a collaborative program in Lucas County, Ohio that involves working with community agencies to identify youth at risk for human trafficking through assessment and to refer those at risk to a human trafficking intervention and other related services as needed. This presentation will provide an overview of the FOCUS Project, including validation of the FOCUS-S assessment for youth, an overview of building a continuum of care, and a review of de-identified assessment data. Attendees will learn about the process of creating a validated screening tool for youth, understand the steps and lessons learned to building a continuum of care in collaboration with community partners, and review descriptive information regarding who is at risk and what the most prevalent risk factors were for youth involved in the project.
Amy LaGesse is the Program Manager for the FOCUS on Runaways Project and the PATH Project at The University of Toledo’s Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute. Amy is honored to serve as the current Chair of Northern Ohio REACH. She has been featured on public radio and local broadcasts.
James Andretta is a licensed psychologist and certified to conduct adolescent and adult forensic mental health evaluations. He is board-certified in forensic psychology by the American Board of Forensic Psychology and is a fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Psychology with over 50+ research publications, including the topic of commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Monica Klonowski is the Research Manager at The University of Toledo’s Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute where she designs and conducts a variety of mixed-methodological processes, outcomes, and impact evaluations on local, state, and federally funded grant projects. She has published several interdisciplinary manuscripts in academic journals.