The TESS Summer Workshop
Breaking Down Barriers: Inter-Agency Workshop Aims to Improve Services for Trafficking Survivors.
YWCA Halifax and its Trafficking & Exploitation Services System (TESS) to Host Inter-Agency Workshop.
YWCA Halifax and TESS will host the TESS Summer Workshop on August 11, 2022. Over one hundred people from across Nova Scotia will work together to identify gaps in service coverage between agencies to enhance existing response protocols and improve access to survivor support across the province. Attendees are TESS community partners including non-profit community organizations, Police Services, the Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service, Department of Community Services, and SchoolsPlus.
“Human trafficking and sexual exploitation are devastating for people, families and communities,” said Karla MacFarlane, Minister of Community Services. “Working together, across agencies and partners, we can better support survivors. We all need to do everything we can to stop human trafficking and to help those impacted by it to heal and move forward.”
“No one agency can do it all,” said Miia Suokonautio, Executive Director of YWCA Halifax. The TESS Summer Workshop is the cumulation of five years of cooperation between agencies. Preventing human trafficking and ensuring wrap-around supports for survivors requires collaborative interagency responses. The primary goal of the workshop is to build pathways between specialized human trafficking divisions and all public reaching sectors to improve service responses for survivors.
“We view this collaborative approach as essential in addressing the complex issue of human trafficking,” said Denise Smith, QC, deputy director of Public Prosecutions. “We know the offence itself looks different in each part of our province, which is why we are working to build regional expertise. Crown Attorneys participating in this workshop will have the opportunity to learn from other agencies, as well as share their own experiences from the communities where they live and work.”
Improved inter-agency cooperation will allow divisions to work better together to identify the variance between what human trafficking looks like in urban and rural settings, provide services to survivors, and education on prevention. On our own we can make minor changes, together we can make an impact.