The British Red Cross invites you to the
Foster Action and Support to Trafficked Persons (FAST) project closing event:
Supporting third country national survivors of trafficking
28th February 2023
Quaker Meeting House, 10 St James’ St, Sheffield City Centre, S1 2EW
We are pleased to be joined by Carita Thomas, immigration solicitor and Head of Legal Practice at ATLEU, who will be presenting on: The impact of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 on third country national survivors of trafficking, and taking questions from the audience about this topic.
To register, click on the following: REGISTER
Agenda
Registration and coffee
10.00 – 10:30
Welcome and opening of the event
10:30 – 10:45
FAST prevention and support interventions, followed by Q&A
10:45 – 11:30
The impact of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 on third country national survivors of trafficking, followed by Q&A – Carita Thomas, ATLEU
11:30 – 12:20
Event close
12:20 – 12:30
Networking lunch
12:30 – 13:30
Background to the event:
The FAST project, co-funded by the European Union’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund, brings together organisations in Italy, Greece, the UK and the Netherlands. Implemented between January 2021 and February 2023, in the UK context the project has provided interventions in Yorkshire, Humberside and the North-West of England to bolster efforts to identify and support survivors and those at risk of trafficking. With a focus on identification and integration, FAST aimed to address some of the challenges that survivors and those at risk of trafficking can encounter with regards to understanding and exercising their rights and entitlements. In the regions covered by FAST, among other challenges, survivors and those at risk may not be identified or able to access appropriate support because of the limited access to legal advice on how to engage with the National Referral Mechanism or explore immigration concerns, or barriers to accessing specialist casework. The Covid-19 pandemic and recent changes to law that affect modern slavery entitlements have brought significant additional complexities to this support landscape, requiring the modern slavery and the asylum and migration sectors to make adjustments to delivery and to consider how survivors and those at risk can meaningfully find out about and secure their entitlements in a way that is trauma-informed and person-centred.
To effectively address the challenges of these operating conditions, the project has used complex casework and groupwork to enable survivors to gain knowledge about their rights and entitlements and to access specialist support. This participatory approach, underpinned by informed decision-making and empowerment, has meant that survivors have played an active role in their support and maintaining their wellbeing. Owing to the intersecting nature of migration and exploitation, the project also focused on capacity-building among practitioners from the asylum and migration sector on how to identify and support survivors through training, advice-giving and the development of guidance about accessing support for survivors of modern slavery who have concurrent asylum claims. This approach has served to leverage the asylum and migration sector’s expertise and reach to protect and support survivors of trafficking and those at risk in the regions covered by FAST.
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