In a report published today a Council of Europe Group of Experts (GRETA) has said that for all the positive aspects of the recent legislation there is still much that needs to be done to improve support and protection for victims of trafficking – especially those who are children.

Among its many recommendations the GRETA report calls on the Government to ensure that all children who are possible victims of trafficking have a special legal guardian appointed to ensure that their best interests are protected.

The report notes the progress made in Scotland and Northern Ireland to create systems of special independent guardians and contrasts that with the continued delays to the full scale implementation of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 provisions for independent child trafficking advocates. CARE has been urging the Government to roll out the scheme across the whole of England and Wales as soon as possible and we hope that the Government will heed the GRETA’s recommendations and speed up the implementation process.

The expert report also calls on the Government to take steps to prevent children going missing from local authority care by providing suitable safe accommodation and ensuring that the foster carers or other supervisors looking after trafficked children have adequate training.

For a long time CARE has been calling on the Government to provide trafficked children with specialist foster carers who know and understand the particular challenges and risks that these young people can face. We welcome GRETA’s recommendations on this and hope that the Government will respond.

We are pleased that the Government intends to provide training for foster carers and support workers, we urge Ministers to ensure this training is in place as quickly as possible. We also welcome the Government’s announcement in June of a new fund for projects aimed at reducing the number of children going missing. However, it remains important that all local authorities take action to reduce the risk of children going missing from their care, often back into the hands of their traffickers.

As well as recommendations for improvements in the care of children, the experts also called on the Government to do more to help victims access support, firstly by establishing in law a right to a reflection and recovery period of initial support and secondly by making more effort to ensure victims have access to support following that first 45 day period.

CARE was very disappointed that the Government did not put a right to access support during the reflection and recovery period into the Modern Slavery Act, and welcomed the provisions in the laws passed in Scotland and Northern Ireland. We strongly advise the Government to now utilise the powers in the Modern Slavery Act to make regulations on support provisions.

We have also recently been concerned at the difficulties victims are having in accessing continuing support once the 45 day reflection and recovery period is over with many ending up homeless without access to benefits on leaving the safe house. 45 days is a very short period of time for a person to even begin to recover from the trauma and exploitation they have experienced. CARE continues to recommend that the reflection and recovery period should be extended to 90 days, but even then it is essential that victims can access medical care, benefits and housing as they continue their journey of recovery and rehabilitation. We call on the Government to listen to GRETA’s recommendations and take action to prevent victims falling out of the safety net when their reflection and recovery period is over.

The GRETA report acknowledges that there have been significant improvements in the UK’s response to human trafficking since their first report in 2012, including the passing of dedicated legislation to address the issue. But, it is essential that the work continues, and that the needs and rights of victims are at the centre of all that is done to address this terrible crime. We now look to the Government to take action.

The report has been published by the Group of Experts on Action Against Trafficking In Human Beings (known as GRETA) – a body established under the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking In Human Beings which the UK ratified in 2008. GRETA evaluates the implementation of the Convention in the various signatory countries. This is the second evaluation report on the UK.