Guidance for Senior Leaders

Responding to public protection and major investigation issues, for example, child abuse, knife crime and sexual offences

This page is from APP, the official source of professional practice for policing.

When developing their force’s response to modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT), senior leaders should take into account:

other relevant national strategies, for example, the Police Race Action Plan and violence against women and girls

This includes ensuring that MSHT is a priority in their force control strategy, and that officers and staff in their force engage with – and support – this strategy. They should ensure that their police and crime commissioner (PCC) is aware of the strategy and seek their support in its delivery. Senior leaders should also ensure that there are processes in place to capture the learning from each MSHT investigation. Senior leaders should use this learning to continuously develop understanding of, and approaches to, MSHT.

Senior leaders should put in place appropriate governance processes to ensure that there is accountable oversight of the force response to MSHT. Such processes should allow the force to understand, prioritise and respond to interconnected exploitation threats, such as:

county lines * child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation * missing people * foreign national suspects

Senior leaders should promote the **4P approach**(opens an external website in the same tab) within their force strategies.

Senior leaders should ensure that appropriate performance, resourcing and deployment strategies are in place to ensure that policing responders and investigators can respond to MSHT effectively and that MSHT investigations deliver appropriate outcomes to victims and the public. For further information, go to:

Senior leaders should work in partnership with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to ensure that incidents of MSHT are dealt with effectively. This includes ensuring that appropriate charges are brought against the suspect.

Senior leaders should work with their PCC to ensure there is a proper understanding of the support needs of victims. Senior leaders and PCCs should identify and secure any additional support that may be required outside of the national provision, so that victims feel safe and empowered to remain in the investigation.

This should focus on what support should be available before and after the national referral mechanism (NRM) referral, as well as alternative provisions for those declining NRM referral. This may include commissioning support services and developing working arrangements between the force and support services.

Senior leaders should make sure that their force has a **victim-centred approach**(opens an external website in the same tab) and that the threat of MSHT is understood and reflected in safeguarding frameworks and partnership arrangements. This includes informing multi-agency safeguarding hubs and local safeguarding boards of incidents of MSHT so that they can **support victims and the investigation where necessary** .

Senior leaders should ensure that appropriate risk assessment tools and assets are used at strategic, regional and tactical levels, so that:

suspects are fully investigated * MSHT investigations are properly resourced and prioritised based on the harm they pose, this includes recording MSHT victims, suspects and operations data onto Police National Database (PND) * intelligence is developed to identify patterns and trends to inform strategic intelligence reporting * nominated analytical assets are used to engage in intelligence development, identify patterns, trends and threats, and inform strategic intelligence reporting, these assets should be included in force and regional MSHT groups and partnership meetings * NCA disruption measures are supported, and all outcomes are recorded and accurately represented

Senior leaders should ensure that staff are provided with a range of MSHT learning to enable effective victim identification and safeguarding, increase suspect disruption and improve standards of investigation. These include the following (all available via College Learn, login required):

Senior leaders should ensure that investigators are equipped to manage complex MSHT investigations.

In addition to the **Effective implementation of problem-oriented policing** , senior leaders should ensure that strategic partnership arrangements are in place at a strategic level. This includes ensuring the following.

All partners are clear about the responsibilities and powers of each respective agency. * Clear terms of reference, intelligence sharing mechanisms (such as access to GAIN), and appropriate data and information sharing agreements are in place. * Governance leads and MSHT multi-agency partnerships understand the national, regional and local threat picture to enable an appropriate response to emerging threat, risk and harm. * Working relationships are created with partner agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and charities, both in the UK and abroad. Most police forces have modern slavery strategic partnership forums that meet regularly and are attended by the major partners and local NGOs. Matters including the provision of reception centres locally should be addressed at this level. * Child victims who have been referred to independent child trafficking guardians (ICTGs) are recorded and monitored.

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