Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed H.R. 469, the Strengthening the Child Welfare Response to Trafficking Act of 2015. Introduced by Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) and Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), the legislation will help to connect child victims of trafficking to appropriate services and prevent further exploitation.

H.R. 469 would provide several tools to strengthen how state child welfare systems respond to child sex trafficking.

“This legislation will provide real training to those responsible for protecting foster children and will compile concrete data so that we can continue to fight against sex trafficking,” Bass said. “Children should never be treated as prostitutes. They are victims. And the men who abuse these children are not johns. They are child molesters. For far too many girls, our foster care system is a gateway to becoming a sex trafficking victim. Our children are our most precious resource, and we all have a responsibility to protect them.”

The Strengthening the Child Welfare Response to Trafficking Act of 2015 is the result of years of work by Bass and child welfare advocates at addressing the nationwide link between children in the child welfare system and sex trafficking. The legislation would ensure that each state develops a child protection plan with provisions and procedures to identify and assess all reports involving children known or suspected to be victims of trafficking; training plans for child protective service workers to appropriately respond to reports of child trafficking; and policies and procedures to connect child victims to public or private specialized services.

The legislation requires the U.S. Department of Human Services to submit a report to Congress outlining the prevalence and types of child trafficking nationwide as well as the current barriers to serving child victims comprehensively.

Further, this bill would ensure that states submit an annual report on the number of children identified as victims of trafficking within the already existing National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems.

According to Bass, in Los Angeles County, 59 percent of the 174 children arrested in 2010 on prostitution charges had contacts with the child welfare system. Approximately 58 percent of 72 sexually trafficked girls in Los Angeles County’s STAR Court in 2012 were children in foster care.