Ethical Practices for Survivor Hiring, Consultancy, & Media Engagements

On Monday, March 28th, Safe House Project hosted an Ethical Survivor Hiring, Consultancy, and Media Practices webinar where we discussed these topics with three industry experts:

• Dr. Elizabeth Bowman, PhD, LICSW, LCSW-C, Executive Director/Founder of Restoring Ivy Collective, Assistant Professor at Gallaudet University, and DMST survivor

• Audrey Morrisey, Associate Director of My Life My Choice

• Maria Contreras, Senior Program Associate of the Collaborative Responses to Commercial Sexual Exploitation Initiative at the National Center for Youth Law

During the course of their conversation, they covered the following topics, answering these questions and discussing the importance of ethical practices when working with survivors of human trafficking.

1. What would you say are the current barriers to ethical practices as it relates to engaging those with lived experience?

2. How do you gauge ethical practices for evaluating lived experience experts’ readiness for work in anti-trafficking and screening pre-hire?

3. What does it look like for each of you to provide equity in the anti-trafficking space for survivors of all demographics and experiences?

4. What ethical practice have you created within your organizations and workplaces to ensure you have trauma-informed, empowerment-based culture for the lived experience experts you work with?

5. How do you encourage and support lived experience autonomy in work-related self-disclosure?

6. What methods do you use to determine appropriate compensation for lived experience experts?

With their combined experience as industry experts, these incredible women outline their experiences working in the field and their top recommendations based on those experiences. To hear their answers to the above questions and compare them to your own answers, check out the webinar here: