Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 21 December 2018 (HL12283), what proportion of Independent Child Trafficking Advocates (1) have had training on Vietnamese culture, and (2) can speak Vietnamese.

The Home Office is leading a multi-agency review of First Responders to identify who should perform this role and how they should be trained. As part of this review, the Government will consider what mandatory training First Responders should undertake, including mandatory training on child-specific material. The results of this review will be published in Spring.

In November 2017, the Department for Education published a Safeguarding Strategy (for unaccompanied asylum seeking and refugee children). The Strategy commissioned a further 1000 training places for carers and support workers to equip them with the skills they need to identify when a child is at risk of going missing and of potentially being trafficked onwards. The Refugee Council has been commissioned to deliver this training and will have delivered 1000 places by the end of March 2019.

Independent Child Trafficking Advocates (ICTAs) receive training which includes awareness of the child’s culture, customs, language, etiquette and history as this enables the ICTA to engage more effectively with the child. The ICTA Service also employs two Vietnamese nationals who speak Vietnamese, to help with appropriate and accurate translation as well as supporting the ICTA with being culturally relevant when supporting children and young people.