London sees around 40% of all the demand for modern slavery across the country
Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy
From the report On Our Streets (Hestia, Sept 24)
With so many of our churches across the diocese supporting vulnerable people through social action projects, it’s important to be able to identify signs and risk factors for exploitation (including modern slavery). Would you know the signs to look for that someone is being held in modern slavery and/or exploited?
There are already some really brilliant resources that can help with this; for example, Safer Car Wash App (from The Clewer Initiative and CCJ) and The Modern Slavery Helpline (from Unseen). These tools focus on concerned individuals being able to make reports about possible/actual cases of modern slavery, and where they think people are being exploited.
But did you also know that people don’t always understand that they are being exploited and/or held in modern slavery?
This January, Causeway (a leading national charity on modern slavery and crime reduction) have launched a new self-assessment tool, the Exploitation Risk Checker – the first of its kind in that it is designed for people to check whether they themselves are at risk/in danger.
The risk checker tool is specially designed to check against criminal and sexual exploitation, described by Causeway as follows:
“Criminal exploitation is a form of modern slavery which involves a person being forced to take part in criminal activity against their will or through coercion for the profit of another. Sexual exploitation involves a person being forced to take part in sexual activities against their will or through coercion for the profit of another”.
We can all play our part in helping to protect vulnerable people from exploitation.
- Could you display information about Causeway’s risk checker tool in your churches/halls?
- Could you encourage people in your church to download the car wash app?
- Could you make sure that any social action project you are part of know how to report concerns around modern slavery?
Keep an eye out this year for new toolkits on modern slavery awareness from the Compassionate Communities team, and a training day in the Autumn!
