Dr. Sandra Morgan and Rachel Parker discuss labor trafficking outreach strategies, touching on community allyship, training and safety protocols, and outreach with and to the local community to identify labor trafficking victims.

Rachel Parker

Rachel Parker is the Anti-Human Trafficking Services Program Manager at World Relief Triad, which she had led for 10 years. She has a master’s in international studies from East Carolina University. Rachel coordinates and supervises outreach and direct services for survivors of both labor and sex trafficking, as well as supervising the coordination of the Triad Labor Trafficking Task Force, the Guilford Minor Trafficking Response Team, and the Triad Rapid Response Team to support victim identification and effective responses across Guilford, Forsyth and Davidson counties.

Key Points

Resources

Transcript

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast, this is episode number 260 Labor Trafficking Outreach with Rachel Parker.

Production Credits [00:00:09] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave [00:00:29] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:35] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:38] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Today, Sandie, so glad that we have an expert with us to really look at labor trafficking outreach in more detail. I’m so glad to welcome to the show today Rachel Parker. She has led World Relief Triad’s anti-human trafficking program for 10 years. She has a master’s in international studies from East Carolina University. Rachel coordinates and supervises outreach and direct services for survivors of both labor and sex trafficking, as well as supervising the coordination of the Triad Labor Trafficking Task Force, the Guilford Minor Trafficking Response Team, and the Triad Rapid Response Team to support victim identification and effective responses across Guilford, Forsyth and Davidson counties. We’re so glad to welcome you to the show, Rachel.

Rachel [00:01:32] Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Sandie [00:01:35] I’m really excited to have this conversation today, Rachel. I think in recent days I’ve talked to so many victim service providers who were surprised when they learned from the survivors that they weren’t looking for someone to rescue them. They didn’t even know that anyone was looking for them. They didn’t identify as a victim, and they often were a little concerned when people approached them that they might get in trouble or lose their job, all kinds of other things. So learning to do outreach to identify victims of labor trafficking is a little different than identifying victims of sex trafficking. And that might be one of the issues we need to be addressing to improve our record of identifying labor trafficking. So tell us what you do on the Triad Task Force and Rapid Response Team.

Rachel [00:02:47] Yeah. So our Triad Rapid Response Team actually formed in 2009, and I’ve been facilitating it or supervising the facilitation since 2012. The name says it all. It’s a rapid response. So when identification occurs and emergency services are needed, we are looking to provide those rapid services across multi counties because of course, safety, security, maybe shelters are full, all of those different things to coordinate through. And so that allows us by having a multidisciplinary team that’s collaborative to respond. However, just kind of giving you guys back history a little bit. When we looked back through our data that we collected, we were really responding to primarily sex trafficking victims and from that the members, we assessed our members and our stakeholders, that were required and vital to a rapid response. And they were around law enforcement, spice narcotics units, child and sex adult crime units, and also the domestic violence and sexual assault shelters. So we really wanted to address what we were feeling was a gap in the identification of labor trafficking because we were receiving referrals from immigration attorneys and from various community sources, but not being able to really engage from our emergency service providers about labor trafficking sit...