A Multidisciplinary Scoping Review of Interventions to Support Victims of Human Trafficking

Author: MacLean, Sarah; Edgar, Nicole; Jormand, Mahsa; Ward, Brooklyn; Yu, Jessica; Sikora, Lindsey & Hatcher, Simon

Abstract: Victims of human trafficking experience extensive trauma, including multiple types of abuse, malnutrition, and unsafe living and working conditions. Supporting victims is complex and requires a multi-sectoral response which includes child welfare, criminal justice, public health, mental health, and social services. The purpose of this scoping review was to identify and assess multi-sectoral interventions to support victims of human trafficking. We searched Medline, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Social Services Abstracts and Social Work Abstracts. All screening and data collection was completed by two independent reviewers. Conflicts were resolved via consensus with the research team. We identified a total of 17,309 papers of which 43 were included for data extraction. In these 43 studies, we identified seven key types of interventions: psychotherapies, housing interventions, residential treatment facilities, psychosocial interventions, case management, occupational therapy, and legal interventions. Of these interventions, only 37% were multi-sectoral in nature. Our findings highlight the need for large-scale, randomized control trials of multi-component interventions to meet the diverse needs of this population. The use of a multiphase optimization strategy (MOST) approach may be especially beneficial here as it allows for the optimization of individual intervention components before a formal randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluation.

Keywords: human trafficking, sexual exploitation, scoping review, victims, supports, wellbeing