Learn from the research and work of Shared Hope’s JuST Response Council and one community to define, build, and implement an ideal community-based framework responding to child sex trafficking victims, with the goal of reducing reliance on child welfare and juvenile justice systems while keeping trafficked youth connected with their family and community. This collaborative effort of community organizations lived experience experts, leaders, policymakers, systems, and funders, reforms what is into what can be to benefit all. By examining implementation of the Roadmap Report in the Chattanooga community, attendees will gain an understanding of how to utilize this report and assist their states and communities in building trauma-informed and youth-centered responses and protocols for furthering Safe Harbor policies. Attendees will also learn how to include the critical voice of youth with lived experiences of trafficking and/or system involvement vulnerabilities as stakeholders develop, plan, and implement effective and impactful responses to youth trafficking victims. With a pilot project currently underway in Chattanooga, TN , the presenters will guide attendees through the process they are utilizing for designing a youth-centered, community-based response, including the requisite funding, coordination, protocols, and deference to survivors’ expertise and desires. Additionally, the project is assessing the impact of relying on systems for connecting youth to services and the related costs of this approach on supports for children, families, and the community at large. Simultaneously, the project is developing a plan for building out a more robust community-based response that can address the gaps and harms resulting from over-reliance on systems and monitoring the cost savings associated with that response. Likewise, to support implementation of Safe Harbor, the state of Tennessee has made direct appropriations to anti-trafficking service providers, supporting a critical shift from system and institution-based responses to community-based services for survivors of trafficking. Together, stakeholders in Chattanooga have been positioned directly impact child and youth survivors out of systems and towards culturally-specific, comprehensive services that have been created and sustained within the community backed by the support of residents, state, and city officials. Presenters will also discuss the challenges that commonly arise in developing this type of approach and why communities in both urban and rural areas are especially well positioned to identify solutions for those challenges. Embracing an ideal response that recognizes current challenges and looks for solutions by reframing the challenges as the impetus for broader system reforms, an elevated response to youth-trafficking victims is achievable.