America UnCanceled: Mercedes Schlapp & Leah Stauffer

Leah Stauffer, head of Half A Million Kids, a charity dedicated to foster kids, talks the foster children factor of human trafficking with Mercedes Schlapp on America Uncanceled.  

20,000 children in foster care go missing each year, a startling statistic that is often dismissed, but is explained by another statistic that shows that 60% of children rescued by the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children have a history in the foster system.  

Upon discovering these statistics, Stauffer was inspired to use her charity to take a new approach to helping foster kids who are victims of human trafficking. She noticed an established system to respond to the needs of foster care victims of human trafficking but lacking efforts to prevent foster children from being trafficked in the first place. She decided to take the prevention approach and focus on getting foster children adopted into stable families.  

“There’s a lot of rescue, a lot of trauma, a lot of therapeutic work. I’m like, ‘Yes, but if we get the kids adopted, they don’t get trafficked in the first place. So, let’s start working in prevention.’ So, I tied trafficking into our mission. So, now we’re dedicated to foster and trafficked children because there’s such an intersection with both,” said Stauffer. 

Stauffer and Half A Million Kids have a three-step plan intended to prevent or repair the major areas of instability in the lives of foster children. Her plan starts by encouraging more families to adopt and then proceeds by empowering social and case workers with modern resources and training and then revolutionizing the group home setting.  

Watch the full conversation with Stauffer on Rumble and social media @CPAC.