Child Trafficking In The UK
Kate Garbers co-founded the charity Unseen UK, which fights against modern slavery, and is now an ambassador and consultant to the organisation.
“Child trafficking is a form of modern slavery, where children and young people have been recruited, transported or transferred for purposes such as sexual exploitation, benefit fraud or domestic slavery,” Kate explains. “Also for forced labour, which in the UK might be manifested in nail bars, car washes or agricultural work, and in criminal activity such as county lines drug running, begging or working in cannabis farms. The victims are deceived, forced, or persuaded by traffickers, or have their vulnerability (especially as children) exploited through the abuse of the adults’ power.
“The National Referral Mechanism identified 10,627 victims in 2019 in the UK, 43% of whom were children. Of those 4,570 children, more than half of them were British born, followed by Vietnamese, then Eritrean, Sudanese and then Albanian children. These are just the people identified through the NRM, we know it is not the full story. In 2019, the highest number of children were found in labour exploitation, particularly relating to criminal county lines activities.
“Factors increasing the risk for children include lower levels of education, lack of equal opportunities and the effects of war and poverty.
There are also specific issues around women and girls and how equal or unequal their society is.
“Some families might believe they are sending their child abroad for a better life, others might be complicit in sending one of their children aboard to work, allowing it for the greater good of helping their family.
“Traffickers are astute. They spot points of vulnerability or a burden that a child is carrying and that’s what they play on. I briefly worked with two trafficked Vietnamese girls who had been approached with the promise of a job and education because they were orphans, so they had no family to miss them. I also worked with a young British guy who had been approached outside his college to join a gang moving drugs across the country. His family were having financial difficulties
and he thought that he might be able to help them out, but he worked for six months without pay and ended up being beaten up, then arrested by the police.
“Unseen UK tackles the issue of modern slavery in several ways. The charity offers a helpline plus safe houses for women and men, which help survivors to access a range of services, including medical care and legal advice. There is also a settlement and outreach team to support them once they have moved into the community.
“Unseen also runs a training package for schools, healthcare professionals and police and works with multiple other statutory and local partners to establish how everyone can play their part. The organisation works closely with the government and are represented on various government strategic boards to provide the survivor’s point of view.
“The charity also piloted the Unseen Children’s House, the UK’s first Ofsted-registered children’s home for trafficked children. Up to 60% of trafficked children disappear from care. Traffickers can still have control over them when in a foster care placement, for example, forcing them to re-establish contact with the threat of harm to their family or, perhaps in the case of victims from a South East Asian culture, by saying that their family will be dishonoured.
“Our volunteer house parents provided a loving family environment for a small number of trafficked children, while a specialist staff team provided bespoke support, and increased security features kept the children safe. None of the children went missing and the children are now thriving.
“I believe strongly we can achieve a world without slavery. We all have a part to play in supporting the work of charities such as Unseen UK, or simply by learning to recognise the signs of child trafficking happening around us.”
www.nspcc.org.uk/what-is-childabuse/types-of-abuse/childtrafficking/.