Independent Advocates for Trafficked Children

Helen Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I do not think we have evidence about consistency, to be honest, but a comprehensive advocacy service would give us that evidence and could also improve consistency. The advocates were able to help children to orient themselves and navigate complex services; to keep trafficked children safely visible to all authorities—we know that is a problem in some areas—to build relationships of trust with the children and with other professionals; to speak up for children where necessary; to maintain momentum in the progress of their cases, including planning for their future; and to improve the quality of decision making in those cases. The children in the trials who had an advocate felt more secure and supported than those who did not. In the words of the report,

“when an advocate was involved in their life, the children had a sense of being cared for in a ‘tight knit’ manner. For the comparator group children, a steady impression emerged of more ‘loose weave’ relationships with intermittent contact with social workers”.

As one child put it:

“I can call my social worker and then she tells me OK but I’m busy or something. But if I call [the advocate] then she can make things happen.”

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate the right hon. Lady on her very good work with the all-party parliamentary group. I declare an interest as a trustee of the Human Trafficking Foundation. The right hon. Lady makes a good case. Does she agree that a close relationship with the advocate often allows the child to feel more comfortable and confident and therefore less likely to take instructions from the trafficker and more likely to trust the local authority?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Every human being needs that person they trust and who they know will stand up for them at every point. For so many of these children, initially that person is the one who brought them to this country, often to exploit them. The great thing about creating an independent advocates scheme is that it gives the children that person.

In February 2015, when the Modern Slavery Bill was on Report in the other place, the Home Office Minister Lord Bates said:

“The success of the trial will be measured by assessing the impact of advocates on the quality of decision-making in relation to the child trafficking victims’ needs by key professionals—for example, social workers, immigration officials and police officers—the child trafficking victims’ well-being; their understanding, experience and satisfaction of the immigration, social care and criminal justice system; and their perceptions of practitioners.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 February 2015; Vol. 759, c. 1668-69.]

If that is the test, there is no doubt that the pilot was a success.

The evaluation report also recognises significant value in having the advocate role operate independently of local authorities and other agencies that provide services to the children, which enabled advocates to play a co-ordinating role, thereby keeping momentum in a child’s case, and to encourage coherence in how they were treated. It also gave the advocate a 360-degree view of the child, their life and their circumstances, which helped them to provide more informed and comprehensive support. One professional stakeholder described the benefit of the holistic nature of the advocate’s role thus:

“The independent CTA [child trafficking advocate] that I have met had a cross cutting knowledge of the NRM, criminal and immigration proceedings that other professionals working with the child (social services and support workers) openly told me they did not. She made sure that his interests in all…areas were proactively pursued, by remaining in contact with all other relevant professionals working with the child. I thought she was excellent in tying these areas together.”

That connects with the point that the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) made about those children needing their trusted person. I worry that the Government’s unpublished anxieties about the shortcomings of the pilot risk our losing some of those special qualities in whatever is the next iteration of the scheme.

The trials showed that advocates can raise awareness of sexual exploitation, help to address poor legal services provided to a child, and challenge when children are placed in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, where other residents might exploit them, rather than with experienced foster families. They help children to access education and support with many everyday needs such as getting transport passes, opening bank accounts and going to after-school clubs. Sadly, those benefits were overlooked by the Government’s response to the trials, which stated that

“the impact of the independent child trafficking advocates…appears to be equivocal”—

a statement so contradictory to the conclusion of the evaluation report that it is honestly difficult to see on what basis it was made.

One sticking point was the failure of advocates to prevent children from going missing from care. Sadly, the Government seem to have a mistaken interpretation of the evaluation’s findings on that account. The fact is that seven of the 15 children who went missing from the advocacy group did so before an advocate was appointed; an accurate reflection of the figures would therefore be to say that, of the 27 children who were permanently missing at the end of the trial, only eight had an advocate in place. The failure of the Government so far to acknowledge that is concerning. I know that preventing children from going missing and protecting them from further exploitation must be a priority, and I welcome the Government’s concern.

[Mrs Grant]

On that important point, does the right hon. Lady agree that children go missing for myriad reasons, including the quality of accommodation, the relationship with the trafficker and the level of English? Although the going missing factor is extremely important, it is probably an unrealistic measure of the trial’s success.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

That is exactly the point I was coming on to. [Interruption.]