For the past six months, the London Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) together with the support of the GLA have been behind a pioneering initiative to provide a set of tools and guidelines, aiming to support social workers, teachers, police, health workers and other professionals who may come into contact with suspected victims of trafficking.

Human trafficking is and has always been inconceivably wrong. It is an inexcusable abuse of the innocent. Those involved are often vulnerable young people who suffer an increased risk of significant harm because they are often invisible to the professionals and volunteers who would be in a position to assist them.

It is with a deep frustration that we are, more often than not, only able to help those who have already been subjected to this vile and often dangerous world.

On the 1st November 2011 I hosted a seminar at City Hall to provide all agencies involved in the initiative, both statutory and voluntary, to take stock of the current situation and consider what more can be done to help us to identify and protect these vulnerable children and young people, with the goal in mind to have measures set up to identify these children within the first ‘crucial hour’ before they go missing.

Creating such initiatives is highly challenging as a result of the level of complexity that surrounds immigration, but, it is precisely for the inexorable pursuit to overcome such challenges that we were elected to office. What we are doing through the provision and sustained support of these toolkits is making it much harder for those adults who go out of their way to hide these children in a shadowed world.

If you would wish to find out more about what we are doing for this cause or would like to view a copy of the London Safeguarding Children Board’s Safeguarding Trafficked Children Guidance and Toolkit, visit the London Safeguarding Children Board’s website.