Newsmakers, June 5, 2014

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• Protecting Children from Human Trafficking

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  For the second time in less than a year, people with an interest in reducing human trafficking in the Coulee Region are meeting to learn more about the issue.

  The Stopping the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Our Children conference is a chance for professionals like police and social workers to learn more about what they may encounter in a human trafficking case.

  The conference is sponsored by the La Crosse Task Force to Eradicate Modern Slavery. The task force formed after a forum was held on the issue last fall, spearheaded by longtime activist June Kjome of La Crosse.

  “I think there will be increasing efforts to network and collaborate on this issue,” said conference organizer Sister Marlene Weisenbeck of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. “People are just so enthusiastic, not about the problem, but in contributing in its eradication.”

  Locally, there are no statistics to describe the problem of human trafficking, and in Wisconsin, there are only calls that have come in to a hotline at the National Human Trafficking Resource Center in Washington, D.C. There were 529 calls to report suspected human trafficking in the state in a recent six year period. One expert believes the problem is much greater in Wisconsin.

  “We don’t have any hard data, but we hope to discover some underlying attitudes,” said Sister Weisenbeck. “Ask us in a year or two, and I’m sure we’ll have more direct and concrete information.”
  (about human trafficking cases in the La Crosse area)

  Professionals attending this week’s conference were expected to learn from the director of the Salvation Army’s PROMISE (Partnership to Rescue Our Minors from Sexual Exploitation) program, and a retired Chicago police officer with 26 years of experience investigating sexual exploitation of children cases.

• Vital Aging

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  The state of Wisconsin needs to do a better job planning for the future of caregiving for the elderly. That’s according to the director of La Crosse County’s Aging Unit.

  “I’m embarrassed to say, I don’t think we’ve (Wisconsin) done a good job planning and I would say that goes for the whole state,” Noreen Holmes said. “If you look to Minnesota, they’ve already done plans for 2020, 2030 and they’re working on 2050. In Wisconsin, we haven’t really begun to plan.”

  Holmes says looking at the future of caregiving is something La Crosse County is working on. It recently started a program called Caregiver Coach, an attempt to create a network to help support those who are just starting to provide care for elderly friends or relatives.

  The county is partnering with the memory care units of both hospitals in an effort to identify first-time caregivers, who could join the Caregiver Coach program taught by experienced caregivers from several community agencies.

  Holmes says an estimated 75-80 percent of elder caregiving in La Crosse County already falls to family caregivers, and she says there is already a shortage of care being provided in rural areas in the county.

  La Crosse County is not alone, and the problem is a national one, so says Amy Goyer, AARP’s home and family expert, herself a family caregiver with 30 years of experience. Baby Boomers have started to turn 55, and the challenge of providing care to an aging population is only expected to become more daunting in the coming decades.

  “AARP recently did some research, and they found that in 2010, there were seven people potentially to care for one person over the age of 80,” Goyer said. “By 2030, that (ratio) goes down to 4-1, by 2050, it’s 3-1. More and more pressure is going to be on those few caregivers.”

  Goyer is a keynote speaker at the fifth annual Vital Aging conference at UW-La Crosse June 12.