§300d–54 Stop, Observe, Ask, and Respond to Health and Wellness Training Program

Summary

The Secretary of Health and Human Services must set up a program called the Stop, Observe, Ask, and Respond (SOAR) to Health and Wellness to train health care and social service workers about human trafficking. The program keeps the SOAR activities that existed before December 31, 2018, and adds new work: it will work with victims and federal, state, local, and tribal partners to make a flexible training module; give technical help to groups that get grants and share best practices; create a privacy-protecting way to count how many trafficking victims grantees identify and serve; and, when appropriate, link SOAR training with existing training for other types of abuse and exploitation. The Secretary can give grants to train providers to spot trafficking victims, to work with law enforcement while following all laws and confidentiality rules, to refer victims to proper services, and to deliver coordinated, age-appropriate, culturally relevant, trauma-informed, patient-centered, evidence-based care. Grant decisions should consider location, the people served, the main types of trafficking cases, and provider types. The Secretary must collect and report the number of grant recipients and the number and location of trained providers, and for the first report also count facilities and groups that ran the earlier SOAR program and their trained providers. Reports to Congress must start within 1 year after December 31, 2018, and be submitted every year after that, protecting individual privacy. Best practices must be posted on the HHS website. “Human trafficking” means “severe forms of trafficking in persons” as defined in 22 U.S.C. 7102. The law authorizes $4,000,000 for each fiscal year 2020 through 2024.