News & Updates
Modern Slavery Unit Newsletter – 29th May 2020
Posted on
| Dear Stakeholder,
This newsletter provides an update on: |
National Lottery Community Foundation launches Coronavirus Community Support Fund |
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The National Lottery Community Foundation has launched a £200m fund for organisations in England who are supporting people and communities experiencing disproportionate challenges and difficulty during the pandemic, and those that provide services and support for vulnerable people and have seen an increase in demand or have lost income. This funding has been made available through the £750m support package for the sector announced by the Chancellor on 8 April. Further funding will be committed and informed by emerging priorities, as the impact of the crisis on vulnerable groups and charities is understood. Further information on financial support for voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations to respond to COVID-19 can be found on this DCMS page. |
Hidden Harms |
| The Prime Minister opened the virtual Hidden Harms Summit in Downing Street last week, to drive action to tackle domestic abuse, child sexual exploitation and modern slavery. The Salvation Army and Dame Sara Thornton, Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, attended to represent the modern slavery sector. At the summit, it was announced that we are allocating £1.4 million to continue funding the police this year under the new Modern Slavery and Organised Immigration Crime Programme. This funding will enable us to support the police to drive forward work to increase modern slavery prosecutions and includes a new focus to build capability to respond to organised immigration crime. The police have also developed a virtual training package to upskill other victim support organisations that may come across victims of modern slavery during the Covid-19 outbreak.
Kathy Betteridge, Director of Anti Trafficking and Modern Slavery at The Salvation Army, the Prime contractor of the Victim Care Contract, took part in a plenary discussion with the Prime Minster and a following discussion chaired by Justice Secretary & Lord Chancellor, Rt Hon Robert Buckland QC MP, to address the impacts of coronavirus and lockdown measures on victims of hidden crimes. Together with Government ministers and representatives from other leading organisations supporting victims of crime, Kathy shared the experiences and voiced concerns on behalf of the thousands of recovering victims of modern slavery currently supported by The Salvation Army. A summit report will be published in the coming weeks, which will outline the Government’s actions to tackle these hidden harms. |
Transparency in supply chains registry |
| Work is ongoing to create a new gov.uk service for organisations to publish their modern slavery statements. The service will enhance transparency by making it easier for consumers, NGOs, investors and others to find and scrutinise organisations statements. The project to create the service recently concluded the Discovery and Alpha phases of work, which involved extensive user research with business, public bodies, NGOs and others to inform the design of the service. The project is now moving into the Beta phase which involves further user research alongside the build and launch of the service. If you are interested in participating in user research please contact [email protected]. For more information about the project please contact [email protected]. |
NRM Statistics |
| The next NRM statistical bulletin, covering quarter 1 2020, will be released on the 4th of June at the following link. |