care is a nonprofit organization that depends on support from the government and foundations and local donors to provide services to use thirteen to twenty four years old in the seattle area we have housing programs that are that provide emergency shelter or transitional living or supportive living for a wide range of views and then we have james to be away for a orion center which is in downtown seattle and it's a drop in center for young people to come in and get meals meet with a case manager get assistance with any crises that are happening with meals and showers and lockers and clean clothes and in addition we have a seattle public school on site and we have  four opportunities for young people to be trade be paid to be trained towards getting employment and having  self moving toward self sufficiency to help ease our transitional living programs and so youth care has three t l p these are homes that have  ten to twelve beds in them for young people and they can live there for a year or more they're staff to twenty four hours a day and it's where they can learn how to live with other people get along with other people and transition into a more stable and safe lifestyle so if young people come into the arayan center with special medical needs we try to meet their dietary needs as best we can we serve three meals a day and a snack and we try to provide vegan options if we can vegetarian options and as best we can we provide gluten free or sugar free meals we are not always able to do that because our we're dependent on a lot of food donations and we have some limitations as to what food we can provide so in the homeless population it is very very important that youth services be separated from adult services the adult population is really right with adults who can do a lot of harm and damage to younger people even a young person who's very resilient and very tough and street savvy can be victimized fairly easily by an older person who's more resilient and more savvy than them so youth homeless services are separated and there he needs are really very unique a young person who is homeless and unemployed and facing you know some difficulties who needs some sustained support and then they can actually move out of homelessness and have a regular life homeless services for adults are often providing some very base six services to keep people sheltered and fed but the goal isn't necessarily to move them out of homelessness so the services for youth are very very different also young people are developmentally challenged in some of their decision making  and their social needs are very different from adults and it's important to look after that because if we don't meet their social needs and meet their developmental needs they can find themselves in a lot more trouble homeless population sees a disproportionate number of you who are quiero coming out are experimenting with their gender identity or their sexual identity a lot of these young people are rejected by their families or their communities or their schools and those become unsafe places for them so you scare the iranian center are very clear fan friendly sites for young people trauma is a really big issue for many many people but in particular for young people who are facing homelessness many of them have witnessed violence in the home or have been the victim of violence trauma can really complicate the difficulties a young person is having it can make it so they don't handle their emotions very well they they can seem very confused in the way they deal with different situations that come up trauma really impacts your coping mechanisms in the most basic way and would i would say almost all the young people that we work with are traumatized because they are living in a stable situation and that's traumatic homelessness in general is on the rise and specifically for young people it's really increasing our numbers in all of our programs are have a really shot up in the last two years part of that is because families are increasingly unstable  because of the economy because of a breakdown of communities of different kinds there just seems to be in  general a strain on most americans and that strain rains down to young people schools are more violent there's been a real increase in the amount of violence and increased sexualization of our society which has really taken a toll on our young people the world is less safe for them it's less nurturing it's it's tougher on everyone and young people are really paying the the price for that and is in this current economy when families get strained it is the older children in the house who either leave because the situation is untenable or they're kicked out because the pants their parents or their families can't support and afford them anymore families that were already having difficulty we have not been able to stay together under this current climate so i think we are in a society where young people grow up pretty quickly and we have foisted more on them than they actually can handle it they are ready to be independent and to be on their own even though they act like they might want to they are still young and need a lot of support and attention one of the biggest challenges for homeless youth is for them to get enough sleep and you know that would be that's a basic need along with eating and having love and acceptance is sleeping and you know we see a lot of young people who are exhausted and with the lack of sleep even if we if you see a kid and they've got a sleeping bag and and their stuff with them and they look like they're doing just fine and they are not well rested and they tend to get sick and have they don't eat good foods and you know in general they're they're in deteriorating health and the lack of sleep can add to you know over being over reactive and being emotion all and having difficulty coping with different situations it's very hard for you know the thousand young people that we have sleeping outside it's hard for them to find places where they're safe and where they can actually sleep what we find is that young people who don't get shelter try to sleep during the day if they can and then the night time when it's less safe they try to stay awake and run around a little bit with friends and ride the buses and keep on the move to to stay out of trouble and then sleep during the day so here in the seattle area and this is corroborated with our sister agencies from around the region the numbers of youth seeking shelter and coming in for emergency services has increased about sixty three percent from two thousand and eight happen i'm a seattle public school teacher with inner agency we partner with other social service agencies of the city and i am partnered with your care at a right and center we have an open classroom it's part of seattle public schools where students can work on credit retrieval and work towards making up work that they're likely behind and most of our students do come behind because they've struggled to end up in other schools often due to homelessness issues which lead to poor attendance which led to truancy we also have a large percentage of students who are special ed or they're in various categories learning disabilities is a big one emotional social behavior problems and we have kids that have just kind of fallen off the grid for various reasons maybe they hada child earlier than expected maybe their family was suffering medical problems that led to bankruptcy and homelessness i've had students that need to take their parent on a die alice the schedule that's pretty tough and that has made them late to class in their traditional schools and then a loss of credit there so they just get behind and they get discouraged and they fall off and we have tried to catch those kids again and let them know that they're there is help and that they can complete their high school education they may not be able to do it on time by a team but at least they get it done by nineteen some of them are twenty you have a right to a free public education for twenty one some of our students are twenty one when they graduate but they're still quite a sense of accomplishment that they got  and so what that looks like is i go into detention several times a week and it works the civic legal girls between the ages of twelve and eighteen who are at risk for homelessness are homeless and str the level he's management with one hundred twenty five youth a year but pretty much i would say about i say about between fifty and eighty percent of the girls in juvenile detention at any period time any given surfing obviously a very young person there for like their first time and they still have connections to their family and their community and resources it's a little bit different bet many of the youth especially the youth with high recidivism that keep coming back into detention are youth who are extremely at risk for exploitation or they're being exploited and when i started this position in two thousand and six i feel is is numbers were a lot lower and as it was like you know only like twenty or thirty percent of the girls were saying that they were involved and i don't know if their openness about it has shifted but i also definitely think that involvement has exponentially increased and i think it's exponentially increased because has exploded in seattle and so i'm especially with the recession more and more again volved boys and girls and also more and more people who need me were trying to find different ways to live every relating that they can make a lot of money off of helping out teenage girls with seattle has become a much bigger part of the west coasts are and i see a lot more girls coming from other cities and that i'm out of my clients go missing for longer periods of time and her going out of state and being taken out of state so i think that's part of been a big part of the increase is is definitely has the seattle ban on the circuit and i also have heard and i don't have a source for this but i've heard not only from statistics but also from clients and from just sort of the various degrees of people and types of people that seattle that's one of the highest rate center pretty much within two or three weeks on the street and they are being exposed to pam stranger is preventing groom them and they're very good at it and knowing what these girls need to hear and want to hear there are many there they are they're not being found in it and they're not getting the resources they need so where news has been reason has been reason and a number of levels it's been reasons you community it's been raised on the city and county and state level and  campbell has gotten very involves the entire community has become much more aware and every i think every level of  services and resources that step touch these girls and boys and and that steve then interact with them either it's juvenile detention and whether it's probation whether it's community her grahams whether here has gotten funding to start the first program in the northwest and the second her grandmama west coast specifically targeted to provide services to provide housing and an extensive usually within a few weeks they have to find some means to survive and so they are the sort of how options that are very limited especially as young women and those are two a lot of times girls end up with boyfriends that are older than them that can provide for them so are providing housing or providing money or they have a car and that is often referred to as survival sex or survival relationships and that in itself is exploitation because usually these boyfriends are significantly older than them and  statutory rape situation and the other thing that happens is girls either are affiliated or involved with gains and then they end up hustling and dealing you know dealing drugs or stealing her doing various gang activities to help make money contribute to the gaining of the part of that family so that they have a place of belonging they they need to be protected they just they feel you know they it's very scary they're so quickly assaulted basically a lot of these have already experienced so much abuse or neglect or chaos that they are trying to find ways while they're out in the can in on the streets to provide that sense of safety and security as best as they can and so frequently that's what comes prime prey on as they see that they they need to feel safe they are not getting enough food off and they're not you know close this because they could be they don't have places to sleep every night and so that is what pam's generally go for as they say you know the first flatter them and these are this is the boyfriend style of recruitment of a flattery and needs whether it's you know it's food it's buying them your clothing getting hotel rooms and you know his things and that's part of the recruitment process of just giving providing the sense of safety and security and love in his off the love that they and terrorizes her into working for him and then that is just a straight here relationship and there's really usually no love no volves they end up in a turning out process in which the young woman at eventually gets to a place  expected by her pimp who she believes to be her boyfriend that she needs to go to the track or to have prostitution areas she needs to make money and it's it's interesting because you feel who i've talked to about this  many reported that they would never an imagined that they would have or could have ever gotten their hands and it's almost always reported that they just love this person so much that and that they would do anything for them and there's a fear that if they don't do what this person they love status that they will either be physically abused by them or they believe them and that's the biggest fear is that there will be them and i've seen that the the two months of grooming and manipulation by these young men and young women and older men and women have kept have often led to job and what they do really really well is they break down the young woman's and young man's sense of identity and sense of self to the point where the day they become their identity becomes completely based off of what the him and the person is saying about them wanting from them are expecting from and is and it takes months and years even if it is young person is only have two months let's say with a ten manipulating them and brainwashing them and breaking down their identity it can take one year two years three years to be for them to even start to be able to rebuild that sense of s pen does is they go straight for their insecurities and their weaknesses their hurt places from the places where they've already been injured from the places where they've already been abused where there is a sense of self and identity has already been weekend over whether it's from neglect whether it's from abuse whether it's from being told their stupid not being in school or a sense of chaos and their parent just hounds and i'm adds and he uses that to both create a love relationship that he's the only person that can fill that space and and then as that is a complete dependence that they will not exist as a whole person with in imminent and terrible danger every single night and if they break any of those rules and then they're considered out of pocket and there there's this sort of understanding there's an understanding amongst the girls that there is this mission for them to be at peace for breaking the being commercially sexually exploited their average life expectancy from the time they began is seven years and it really is a bit of a race with time because there is you know young people that  that the danger comes from i hear just as high reports around johns as using them as pam's because of this brainwashing and because of all the levels of abuse and trauma that come with their this exploitation like it takes many women in domestic violence situations an average of seven times to leave the views young people need many opportunities over and over again to get the resources that they need to get housing options to try different schools to have access to employment to have access to treatment that is focused on their needs and their trauma and its various pacific t trauma and they they need the opportunity to access these things over and over and over again because it takes it a woman and a vet and domestic violence relationship an average of seven times of leaving and going back and even going back before they can we verify user regret and i feel like it often takes these young women that many times or more because of the level of control and brainwashing brainwashing and sort of identity theft that happens through this process three domestic minor sex trafficking victims interviewed in las vegas for sold ten to fifteen times per night six days a week totaling between ninety three hundred and fourteen thousand sex acts a over eighteen months two hundred seven children were arrested for soliciting prostitution in las vegas if they also were assaulted for ten to fifteen sex acts printing for a year buyers purchased between six hundred forty five thousand eight hundred