Houston Republic

The Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Coordinating Council, put together and led by Attorney General Ken Paxton's office, is designed to combat human trafficking by applying the Strategic Plan, which focuses on five pillars.

Eliminating human trafficking will require collaboration between several organizations and groups, the Strategic Plan states. In other words, this means human trafficking stakeholders need to partner together, which will develop relationships and help strengthen plans to combat human trafficking. 

The Coordinating Council identified the Partner Pillar as the most important, because without it, the other four pillars of the Strategic Plan - Prevent, Protect, Prosecute and Provide Support – wouldn't be able to coordinate together with stake-holding groups and organizations. 

The Partner Pillar has two strategies, the Strategic Plan states. 

The first strategy is to invest in building expertise to drive policy and practice. To do this, Texas will have to prioritize developing expertise in human trafficking, according to the plan. 

This can be done "by building central repositories of information and investing in human trafficking research through partnerships with universities, state agencies, corporations and private entities," the Strategic Plan said. 

Building these relationships and collaborations between agencies and organizations will help the state implement policy, strategy and practice to fight human trafficking. 

The second strategy is to encourage the growth of public-private partnerships. 

"Currently, our statewide partnerships and collaborative efforts have been fragmented," the plan states. "But the Coordinating Council aims to coordinate these efforts by encouraging and developing partnerships."

Not only is collaboration necessary, but there must be collaboration between public and private agencies and organizations. An example would be that local, state and federal government agencies must partner with faith-based groups and anti-trafficking task forces and groups will need to partner with corporate and nonprofit organizations as well. These types of partnerships will help keep local communities more aware and increase engagement from the public, according to the plan. 

"Texas already has a multitude of community collaborations across the state addressing human trafficking, some formal, some informal, but all doing important work," the Strategic Plan said. "These multidisciplinary collaborations capture the entire human trafficking spectrum from prevention, to investigation, to prosecution and to the support services necessary to provide a comprehensive perspective."