New FosterPower app tool aims to protect foster youth from human trafficking
'If a person is lacking housing or food, the trafficker offers a place to stay or something to eat, or if someone is lacking connection with other people, or love and affection, traffickers will take on the role of a significant other'
Human traffickers don’t prey on ignorance — they prey on need, says Mary Rose Maloney, a Bay Area Legal Services attorney who represents foster youth who have been exploited.
If a person lacks housing, food, or connection, traffickers step in to fill that void, Maloney said.
“For example, if a person is lacking housing or food, the trafficker offers a place to stay or something to eat, or if someone is lacking connection with other people, or love and affection, traffickers will take on the role of a significant other.”
Losing ties to family, friends, and familiar surroundings, or living as runaways, foster youth are prime targets, Maloney says.
The National Foster Youth Institute ranks Florida as the third in the nation for reported human trafficking cases.
But it may never be possible to know exactly how many of the 20,000 youth in Florida’s child welfare system are trafficked. Victims don’t consider themselves exploited and are almost always pledged to secrecy.
Determined to help foster youth avoid the danger, Maloney has created a new addition to a powerful tool developed by her colleagues at the L. David Shear Children’s Law Center — the “FosterPower” app.
The award-winning app and an accompanying website offer foster youth easy to comprehend information about their benefits, protections, and legal rights, some of it in the form of 40 short-form, TikTok-style videos that share the experiences of former youth in the foster system.
FosterPower also provides in-person and virtual training for youth in foster care and adults, including child welfare professionals, judges, attorneys, and foster parents, on children’s legal rights.
Taylor Sartor: 'I would definitely say, spread the word about the app, let other people know that it’s available. But also, look into the app yourself. FosterPower is a very helpful resource for attorneys.'
Bay Area Legal Services senior staff attorney Taylor Sartor launched the program in 2023 as “Know Your Rights,” an informational guide for youth in foster care.
At the time, Sartor was in her final year at Stetson, serving as a guardian ad litem to two teenagers, and growing frustrated with her inability to find answers to basic questions.
How much is an allowance? Who’s responsible for taking a foster child to the doctor? How does a youth qualify for extended foster care?
Maloney, a 2024 Stetson College of Law graduate, is an Equal Justice Works fellow sponsored by Greenberg Traurig. Maloney serves as FosterPower’s human trafficking project manager. The human trafficking section she developed is very much in keeping with the program’s “knowledge is power” theme.
“Everything from what is human trafficking, what are the different types, and legal-specific issues, such as expungement, name changes, victim rights,” she said. “We even have a tool that is meant to be used to reflect on their own experiences.”
The latter offers a valuable perspective, and potential red flags, Maloney says.
“It gives a potential victim an opportunity to think about their experiences in terms of whether they have been safe or unsafe,” Maloney says. “Hopefully, the goal is for them to self-identify as victims of human trafficking — or at least identify that maybe something they’ve been through wasn’t safe and they need help.”
Maloney notes that she often brings the app with her into the courtroom to have easy access to statute citations. Judges and social services caseworkers in Southwest Florida have the app on their phones, and account for some of the 5,500 downloads, and 200,000 video views the program has generated.
“I would definitely say, spread the word about the app, let other people know that it’s available,” she says. “But also, look into the app yourself. FosterPower is a very helpful resource for attorneys.”
The human trafficking section Maloney developed was reviewed by former foster youth with lived experience.
“They helped a lot with wording, you know, adding certain things that made it clear that if you experienced human trafficking, it’s not your fault, help is available.”
Maloney’s lived experience also proved invaluable.
She earned her law degree from Stetson with a concentration in social justice advocacy and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and international affairs, graduating magna cum laude, from Florida State University. Before that, she worked as a child welfare case manager.
“So, I worked with families and kids in foster care,” she says, “and I kind of became the go-to person in my case management unit for human trafficking cases. I definitely had a passion for it.”
Working closely with children’s services lawyers who represented the Department of Children and Families inspired her to go to law school.
The work can be emotionally taxing, but Maloney is learning to pace herself.
“Sometimes, we’re hearing these horrific stories, reading these horrific stories, and it can be exhausting,” she says. “But now, realizing that I’m mentally and emotionally exhausted, and accepting that, and doing things to rest and re-fuel, that really helps this work to be sustainable.”
The work can also be enormously rewarding, Maloney is quick to note.
She recalls a 13-year-old client who was at risk of being removed from a relative’s care after a technical issue resulted in a failed home study.
“The case manager said we have to move her to licensed foster care, because it was the policy,” Maloney says. “But we know kids in licensed foster care generally have worse outcomes than kids who are living with a loving and safe relative.”
Maloney petitioned the court for an emergency hearing and convinced a judge that her client was not at risk.
“We were able to keep her in that same home where she’s been living and that’s just so great.”
