FosterPower App Tool for Florida

“‘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.”

“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.”

”The human trafficking section [Taylor ] Maloney [an Equal Justice Works fellow sponsored by Greenberg Traurig]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.”

NEW FOSTERPOWER APP TOOL AIMS TO PROTECT FOSTER YOUTH FROM HUMAN TRAFFICKING
[Florida Bar 1/28/26 by Jim Ash]

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