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11 | Friday, February 17, 2017 | OAKVILLE BEAVER | www.insideHALTON.com Local agencies work together so survivors don't have to walk alone continued from p.1 The Ontario government defines hu man trafficking as "a criminal offense that involves recruiting, transporting, transferring, receiving, concealing, or harbouring a person, or exercising control, direction or influence over the movement of a person for the purpose of exploiting them or facilitating their exploitation." This encompasses labour trafficking as well. Trafficking is a long game. According to Stover, it occurs most commonly at the 401 and 403 highways because of the access to hotels, and there are many ways young girls can be groomed. "There are so many ways that an in dividual can be groomed for purposes of sexual exploitation," Stover said, not ing the girls who are targeted normally have obvious vulnerabilities to begin with, including a history of being in care, they have a history of substance abuse, instability in their families or are battling mental illnesses. "They get tar geted by traffickers who are trying to set up this `boyfriend experience.' They tell them they're beautiful and everything they've ever wanted to hear and they're going to take them away from this ter rible situation and love them forever. "It is this horrible manipulation of playing on the insecurities that so many young girls go through," Stover said. "There's this idea traffickers intentional ly prey on those vulnerabilities and use that to trap a girl and have her think he's her boyfriend and she'd do anything for him. It's at that point that he does ask her to do anything, and that's where the manipulation and the force comes in." Stover said the girl may offer to com ply in the beginning, but violence may be introduced into the situation should she decide to back out. Trafficking and independent sex work is a careful distinction to make, Stover said. The steps in determining whether or not a girl is being trafficked or is an independent sex worker boils down to two decisions regard ing independence and consent. "Is the person actually in dependently making choices to be involved in sex work or are they being forced to with somebody else controlling their movement?" Stover said. "Then there's the idea of con sent: are they choosing to be in volved in this, is this something they want to do? Or is someone forcing them to do it?" If the person who comes for ward wants to do independent sex work, SAVIS and the col laborate will work with them to keep them safe by taking harm reducing precautions, such as creating a safety plan and pro viding the person with contra ceptives and tests for sexually transmitted infections (STI). In both cases, women will receive first response bags filled with what Stover describes as "dignity" items. "When they come to us, they often don't have much with them, they might only have the clothes they're wearing," Stover said. "The bags are intended to be something so they can have toiletries to go take a shower, they can put on a new change of clothes, they can have a new phone card to make a phone call. It's really about showing dignity to survivors and ... treating them like they are valued indi viduals and we really want them to feel comfortable and cared for, especially when some of them are in their most vulnerable situ ations in their lives." On Feb. 23, the two groups will present a model to service providers detailing the best and most effective ways of handling a situation of human trafficking, the first half of the project. "The model itself is intended to be a basic user manual or how-to guide for service pro viders in the Halton Region when they're providing service to survivors of human traffick ing," Stover said. "Our intent is that it will be used by those who are currently providing service and also to help those who may not be already providing service but have the potential to do so." According to Stover, no such model has existed until now. "There wasn't a co-ordinated approach in the region to be able to support survivors and we also found there were a lot of agencies who weren't aware they were supporting survi vors of human trafficking and weren't aware of the unique needs they have in terms of the trauma they experienced and the appropriate housing and service models they needed," she said. "It was really impor tant to create something that would meet the unique needs of the survivors of trafficking." The second half of the model will include the collaborative hosting of sessions to raise awareness in the community and educate service providers. "We want to provide the ser vices and also equip service pro viders in how to use the model and how to approach survivors and how to serve them that is best for the survivor," Sto ver said. The event is Thursday, Feb. 23, at 1 p.m. at the Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre, 2302 Bridge Rd. "We never want a survivor to be on their own try ing to access the services they need," Stover said. "We want it to be a wrap around approach, that pro viders are walking along side survivors and helping them every step of the way." Dr. Arun Narang D.D.S. Dr. Ulyana Romanyuk D.D.S. W h a t A re th e B e n e fits o f D e n ta l Im p la n ts ? There are few experiences as frustrating as having missing teeth. 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