Legal Update: Trafficking victims and families
Frances Trevena
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Frances Trevena, head of policy and programmes at Coram Children's Legal Centre, examines the gaps in service provision for families and child victims of trafficking and how this group can be better supported.
Last month the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group (ATMG) released a report on trafficking victims and their families, Time to Deliver, which highlights the gaps in service provision for victims of human trafficking and modern slavery in the UK.
The report, based on interviews with non-governmental organisations, looked beyond the provision for individual adult and child victims to establish what happens to family units where a member has been a victim of trafficking. The relationships within these families are as complicated as any other, and the impact of exploitation on family members may result in a greater need for social work intervention.
Modern slavery can affect entire families – for example there have been cases of families trafficked to the UK for forced labour or benefit fraud – and victims of modern slavery may also go on to establish their own families before or after identification, including those who become pregnant as a result of their trafficking situation. Some of these parents with children may experience further separation from their children as a result of concerns regarding the child’s welfare once in the UK.
A number of victims of human trafficking are already parents and this can increase their vulnerability to r
