Hestia's Modern Slavery Statement - September 2024

As the leading provider of support to survivors of modern slavery in London and the South East (including Berkshire and Kent), Hestia is committed to tackling this crime in all its forms.

1. About Hestia:

Hestia is a registered charity and a company limited by guarantee. Our mission is to provide safety, hope, and purpose to people in crisis, aiding their recovery and helping them look towards the future. Our trauma and resilience-focused Hestia Approach, along with our excellence in commissioned contracts and philanthropic partnerships, is central to our strategy and growth across London and the South East.

We amplify the voices of our service users, bringing their experiences to the attention of policymakers, partners, and communities, and use our insight, evidence, and expertise to advocate for meaningful change.

Hestia supports survivors of modern slavery and domestic abuse, people with mental health difficulties, older adults, care leavers, and those leaving prison. While our primary focus is on London and the Southeast, we also work nationally on the prevention of domestic abuse and sexual violence through partnerships with public and private sector organisations and online support.

In the financial year 2023-24, Hestia supported 20,033 adults and children through various accommodation and community-based programs. Our services were delivered by 750 permanent staff, with additional support from agency and bank workers, 544 community volunteers and 548 volunteers via corporate partnerships. Hestia’s annual turnover declined by approximately £1 million over the financial year ending March 31, 2024, to £47,174 million.

Further information on our impact and accounts can be found on our website in our Annual Reviews and Financial Statements.

Hestia's role in improving the situation for survivors in the UK:

An estimated 122,000 people in the UK are trapped in modern slavery today. Since 2011, Hestia’s modern slavery service aims to restore dignity and advocate for systemic change to end slavery. We work closely with The Salvation Army to deliver support to victims referred to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), a national framework ensuring victims of modern slavery are identified and receive appropriate support.

Over 2023-4 we supported 2,837 potential victims of modern slavery via our safe houses and community outreach. We also support and advocate for dependents who are survivors of modern slavery, having supported over 850 dependent children over the last financial year.

Survivors of modern slavery face a long and often complicated journey to recovery. Hestia’s Modern Slavery Innovation Team provides evidence-based support services, focusing on child and family support, community integration and volunteering, and employability. We have now redesigned our child and family support offer and provide a range of online and in-person activities to break down isolation and support service users to volunteer, as well as connecting our most vulnerable service users with befrienders. We continue to seek financial support to launch our employability program.

Hestia raises awareness about modern slavery through our flagship Art is Freedom exhibition and  Underground Lives research. In 2023, our sixth exhibition was co-curated by survivors and Sky Arts, reaching an estimated 6-7 million people. We deliver modern slavery awareness training to external companies and have recruited a modern slavery trainer to grow our external reach, upskill our staff, and deliver against social value commitments.

Policy and Research:

As the leading organisation in London working with victims of modern slavery, we are committed to bringing survivors’ voices and our experience into improving policy and practice. The passing of the Illegal Migration Act in 2023 and its implementation is expected to bring significant changes to the sector. It means that victims of modern slavery and human trafficking who have entered the UK irregularly through no fault of their own – in many cases forced against their will, coerced, or deceived – will be detained or deported.

Hestia and pro bono legal counsel, fought for amendments to the Bill to protect all potential victims of trafficking. Despite initial support, the final legislative process ended in concession.

Hestia submitted evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into the trafficking of human beings in March 2023, and supported four survivors to give verbal evidence in July 2023. We increased opportunities for survivor voice to influence policy via our Empowered Voice forum, This collective of survivors met with a delegation of the Home Office Modern Slavery Unit, the National Police and Crime Commissioner for Modern Slavery and Organised Crime Unit, and the newly appointed Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, sharing insights into what they believe is primordial to victim rehabilitation, and co-designed the communication strategy to all our service users about the Illegal Migration Act. 

In January 2024 Hestia tabled an amendment to the Victims and Prisoner’s Bill in the House of Lords with the support of Baroness Hamwee, asking for explicit reference to be made to children born into Modern Slavery as victims of Modern Slavery in their own right. Whilst our proposed wording was not ultimately accepted, there was detailed discussion of the importance of this issue but some agreement that children were recognised as potential victims more broadly elsewhere in the Bill.

Following this, Hestia was invited to give evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Modern Slavery Act of 2015 and in March 2024 also submitted written evidence. With a new Government coming in place, Hestia has convened leading sector providers of the Modern Slavery Victims Care Contract to share a manifesto for change which would significantly improve the experience of victims and survivors. The calls we make are split into those that can be delivered in the first 100 days of a new government and more significant, longer-term change.

Our Underground Lives series explores the experiences of hundreds of survivors, focusing on issues such as pregnancy and modern slavery, the needs of male victims, criminal exploitation and dependent children, and employment opportunities for survivors whilst in the NRM. Our latest research, published in October 2023, examines the experiences of Albanian survivors of modern slavery. These reports help inform the public, decision makers, service providers, and sector experts, as well as the development of Hestia’s programme of support which we are currently actively fundraising for.

Hestia is a Police Super Complaint Designated Body and submitted the first-ever Police Super Complaint focused on modern slavery in 2019. The evidence submitted demonstrated that the police response fell short of the standards required to safeguard and support victims of this crime and that poor quality, inconsistent support deters victims of modern slavery from engaging with the police and supporting investigations. We continue to advocate for better victim support and protection to ensure the prosecution of criminals who traffic and exploit.

Training:

Hestia has developed a bespoke training package on modern slavery for organisations and employers. This is led by our training manager who joined the team in October 2023. Her objectives are threefold: to deliver training externally to raise awareness among community and corporate partners; to upskill Hestia people (staff, students, and volunteers); and upskill Local Authority and Commissioning teams who entrust Hestia to deliver their services.

2. Achievements since our last Modern Slavery Statement

Expansion of training:

Objective 1 - Raise awareness among community and corporate partners: Since October 2024, we have renewed our CPD accreditations, reviewed our pricing and training packages, and actively promoted the training online. We have delivered eight sessions to six partners, reaching 129 individuals. We also delivered specialist topic training on legislative changes in the sector for the Clewer Initiative, reaching over 100 individuals.

Objective 2 - Upskill our People: Our training includes mandatory modern slavery training online for all staff, with 85% completion. Trustees participated in awareness training in July 2024.

With our Training Manager in post, we also delivered internal training to over 60 volunteers and staff in our frontline and central services. The training manger has been building internal engagement via staff events and a biannual Lunch and Learn to deepen internal understanding of Modern Slavery, emerging trends and Hestia’s training and response.

Objective 3 - Upskill Local Authority and Commissioning Teams who entrust Hestia to deliver services: In line with social value commitments, we have delivered six training sessions to local authority teams (in Kingston, Richmond, Wandsworth, and Newham), reaching over 80 people, including NHS midwives, nurses and mental health professionals, child and adult social workers, teachers, refugee, and asylum support officers.

Supply Chains:

We have commenced a three-year radical procurement project which has two main workstreams: a new, tougher approval process which will interrogate suppliers’ modern slavery policies and supply chains; and we are pursuing increased centralisation of procurement via either exclusive contracts or frameworks, ensuring from April 2024, the processing of invoices for payment can only occur where a supplier has successfully applied for approval.  This approach will enable us to ensure best value for money, to have better oversight and management of risks in our supply chains, and to build stronger relationships with key suppliers to enable a focus on issues such as modern slavery.

All major suppliers are already assessed for risk levels and we work with them accordingly to make every effort to ensure that the risks of modern slavery in their supply chains are minimised. Where possible we undertake this work via high-level conversations and plans for the future include sharing materials from our MS team with suppliers via e.g. ‘lunch and learn’ sessions with their employees and regular e-newsletters. 

3. Key risk areas

Based on our work to-date the main areas of risk we have identified are:

Illegal Migration Act 2023, the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, the new Returns and Enforcement programme: The new Labour Government have stopped the returns to Rwanda programme but have moved civil servants previously working on this to a Returns and Enforcement programme with a focus on cracking down on illegal employment and deporting migrants illegally working in the UK. This includes sectors where modern slavery is common. We are monitoring the impact of this programme and are calling for the need to identify possible victims of modern slavery and ensure they are adequately supported.

Whilst the new Government have already made some positive changes – including putting modern slavery back under the Minister responsible for safeguarding - survivors still risk being prevented from accessing the support they need under current legislation. Therefore we are continuing to closely monitor the impact of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the Illegal Migration Act 2023 on our services and are pushing for the change outlined in our manifestos which would significantly improve how this country protects victims of modern slavery and human trafficking, and how it punishes the perpetrators behind such crimes.

Supply Chains: While we are pleased with increased engagement by our central suppliers, many remain at the start of their journey to understand and tackle modern slavery. Our main concern remains the risks in our devolved supply chains where we do not have such strong organisational oversight. To progressively address this, we are ensuring new suppliers are centrally screened before being approved through our new Procurement Project and we are working to develop a training offer for all our suppliers to ensure they can identify potential concerns of exploitation and take appropriate safeguarding action.

Vulnerability of clients linked to the cost-of-living crisis: We are increasingly concerned about the financial vulnerability of many of the clients we work with and their inability to access basic services such as safe housing and legal support. This creates a further opportunity for exploitation by criminal gangs and other perpetrators of modern slavery. In particular, there is potential for individuals to be targeted for labour exploitation and cuckooing. We are addressing this directly through the creation of our Legal Support Hub outlined below and through supporting people in our services where we can with basic supplies. Across all our services we are starting to explore whether and how we can do anything to improve people’s access to safe housing – be it raising the issue with political decision makers or looking at alternative solutions for housing provision.

4. What we will do next

While Hestia’s Modern Slavery Response Team plays a major role in supporting survivors of modern slavery and preventing re-trafficking, this is a time of acute uncertainty. Over the coming year we will work to engage the new government to improve support, continue to assess the implications and impact of new legislation in this changing political climate, and prepare ourselves and our service users by adapting our service delivery model to respond.

Key priorities include: 

Providing comprehensive support to our survivors as early as possible: The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 reduces the time available for support, increases the threshold for people to access support, and introduces provisions to disqualify people from support. We will continue to closely monitor the impact on the number of people referred to services and deliver support to them as swiftly as possible by redesigning our service delivery model. This transformation journey will allow us to better respond to the increased complexity of need observed, whilst equipping survivors with tools for independence as quickly as possible.

Continuation of our Community Integration service:  It is likely that survivors will be entitled to lower levels of support and will exit services faster than previously. Therefore, we are committed to continue to deliver a community integration service which includes a befriending volunteer programme, and activities aimed at increasing survivor’s self-confidence, joy, confidence, and resilience and supporting their independence.

Legal Support: Legal advice and representation can play a pivotal role in supporting people to rebuild their lives after crisis - from getting compensation for criminal injuries, securing housing entitlement, or ensuring children are safe. We are piloting an innovative Legal Services Hub to help more people access timely and free legal support.

Ongoing development of our training offer and growth in reach: We will continuously review and adapt our training offer to include the most recent policy and legislative changes. Led by our new training manager, we will ensure this encompasses the impact of the Illegal Migration Act on not only our modern slavery service users, but also those impacted in our mental health, domestic abuse, and wider services. We want to reach new markets and new audiences, driven by the belief that we all have a part to play in eradication modern slavery, and we cannot do this without enlisting as much community and business support as possible.

Advocating for and championing the needs of modern slavery victims in the UK: informing the implementation of new legislation as well as service and policy development (including the new Adult Victim Policy). This will include engagement with the new government as well as policy makers across all parties in both Houses, and the Independent Anti- Slavery Commissioner; working with the Home Office Modern Slavery Unit and attending their Modern Slavery Engagement Forum on Adult Victim Policy quarterly; and joining a Detention Taskforce to ensure we are kept abreast of changes and trends observed in detention centres.

Continuing to create emotional connection: Motivation to tackle modern slavery is deeply linked to people’s emotional commitment to the issue. We will continue to share survivors’ stories with the public and across our internal and external networks to bring their voices and experience to the fore. Key engagements include our Art is Freedom event and our next Underground Lives publication, ‘Breaking Point’, which will focus on the mental health needs of survivors in our services. In early autumn, we will also publish our research: ‘On Our Streets: The changing face of modern slavery’. This will combine data, insight, and poignant human stories on where the crimes take place and how they have evolved, alongside data which challenges public and political perceptions of this crime.

Approved by Hestia’s Board of Trustees on 7^th October 2024

Signed by Director of Fundraising and Communications

Read our 2023 Modern Slavery Statement.