What is modern slavery?
Modern slavery is the recruitment, movement, harbouring or receiving of children, women or men through the use of force, coercion, abuse of vulnerability, deception or other means for the purpose of exploitation.
Someone is in slavery if they are:
- forced to work - through coercion, or mental or physical threat
- trapped and controlled by an ’employer’, through mental or physical abuse or the threat of abuse
- dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as ‘property’
- physically constrained or have restrictions placed on their freedom of movement
There are many types of modern slavery, but these are the most prevalent types:
- ‘slavery’ is where ownership is exercised over a person
- ‘servitude’ involves the obligation to provide services imposed by coercion
- ‘forced or compulsory labour’ involves work or service extracted from any person under the menace of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself voluntarily
- ‘human trafficking’ concerns arranging or facilitating the travel of another with a view to exploiting them
Children may be alone/unaccompanied or part of a sibling, family or community group. They could be trafficked by their parents, foster parents, adoptive parents, siblings, communities or by complete strangers.
Child trafficking is often multi-faceted and therefore children may experience more than one exploitation type, for example, labour exploitation by day and sexual exploitation by night.
Victims of Child trafficking may experience:
- extreme trauma
- Juju and witchcraft
- rape, being held captive
- beatings, drugging
- change of identity and confiscation of identity documents
- multiple loss/separation
- made to believe that they owe large sums of money - debt bondage
- social isolation
As victims of child trafficking, children should receive:
- immediate safety on identification
- appropriate accommodation
- language and cultural support
- National Referral Mechanism (NRM) referral
- follow up support and education
- support to deal with the trauma they have faced
- support to prevent further abuse and exploitation
Please be aware that this is not an exhaustive list.
All first responders to the NRM including the police and local authorities have a ‘duty to notify’ via a NRM of any potentially trafficked children, this is part of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 legislation. For more information, visit National Crime Agency - Modern slavery and human trafficking.
How to report concerns
Modern Slavery is a crime that is hidden from plain sight but, occurs everywhere around us. Modern slavery is happening in Enfield. An advice line is available, Monday to Friday from 10am to 2pm to provide advice and support for those that have any concerns or general questions regarding modern slavery.
If you would like to discuss your concerns, please contact:
- Enfield Modern Slavery Team, Monday to Friday from 10am to 2pm on 020 3821 1763 or email modernslavery@enfield.gov.uk
- Enfield Adult Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub - 020 8379 3196
- Enfield Children Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub - 020 8379 5555
- Enfield Adult Abuse Line - 020 8379 5212
Other agencies and the public are still encouraged to report their suspicions and can do so by calling:
- National Modern Slavery Helpline - 0800 0121 700
- Police - 101
Resources and tools
ECPAT UK - campaigning against child trafficking and transnational child exploitation.
For more information on modern slavery, visit MyLife.