ECPAT UK (Every Child Protected Against Trafficking) is thrilled that its animated short film about child trafficking in cannabis cultivation – The Secret Gardeners, has won the gold medal in the Human Concerns category at the New York Festivals World’s Best TV and Films awards.Read more
ECPAT UK has released a new film. ‘Behind the Behaviour: identifying the criminal exploitation of migrant children’ highlights how migrant children who are criminally exploited may not be easily recognised as victims by frontline services in the UK.Read more
ECPAT UK is once again working with the UK’s leading travel association, ABTA, to ensure staff in the travel and tourism industry are trained to identify and respond to child protection concerns.Read more
ECPAT UK is calling on the UK Government to do more to protect child victims of modern slavery after the latest official statistics from the NCA showed a huge 66% rise in the number of children identified as potential victims during 2017.Read more
ECPAT UK’s Trafficked Girls’ Group Assistant, Temi Adekoya, has won the Young Leader of the Year award at London Youth’s annual award ceremony celebrating young people making outstanding contributions to their communities.Read more
Up to 1,000 children may have been abused in Telford, with victims as young as 11 years old suffering sexual exploitation. The scandal highlights endemic failings in how we respond to child abuse and underlines the need for better training, multi-agency working and adequate resourcing of frontline care servicesRead more
ECPAT UK is delighted to announce Katherine Mulhern as the new Chair of ECPAT UK – a leading child rights charity working to protect children from trafficking, abuse and exploitation. Katherine takes over from Ian Hanham who stood down last month. Ian will continue to serve on the board as a Trustee.Read more
The Oxfam scandal exposed the sexual exploitation of vulnerable children by foreign aid workers, highlighting the endemic child abuse being committed internationally. Greater transparency, accountability and safeguarding measures must be implemented by governments, charities, businesses and individuals to prevent international child exploitation.Read more
British national, Matthew Falder, was jailed today for 32 years after admitting 137 charges of online sexual exploitation against children and adults in the UK and internationally. Falder used the anonymity of the dark web to trick and blackmail victims into providing footage of sexually abusive acts, deliberately targeting young and vulnerable victims. It is a 'watershed moment' for the policing and prosecution of transnational abuse of children online.Read more
‘Stephen’ was identified as a former child victim of trafficking but now faces the threat of removal to Vietnam. His case has rightly received significant public attention, highlighting the urgent need to reform the support system (the National Referral Mechanism) for other children who have been victims of modern slavery in the UK.Read more
There is “limited availability of specialist provision” for migrant children who are identified as potential victims of modern slavery by local authorities, a new report has found, strengthening ECPAT UK’s campaign call for urgent reforms to the way in which the UK responds to trafficked children.Read more
A new report by the National Crime Agency finds thousands of children are being trafficked to supply drugs by ‘county lines’ gangs into rural parts of the UK.Read more
The UK should introduce a ‘firewall’ between child protection services and immigration services to protect the rights of child victims of trafficking from abroad, according to two UN Committees.Read more
ECPAT UK's survey on the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) has found that more than half of frontline workers believe the current NRM, the main framework for identifying and protecting victims of trafficking, needs to be revised to better protect child victims of modern slavery.Read more
ECPAT UK has joined with other UK children’s experts to form the ‘Brexit and Children’ coalition and create an important new discussion paper outlining concerns about the impact of Brexit on children.Read more
ECPAT UK has become the UK representative of The Code, an international initiative to support travel and tourism companies to prevent child sexual exploitation.Read more
ECPAT UK responds to the government's announcement regarding reforms to the National Referral Mechanism for victims of trafficking. ECPAT welcomes the reforms although they do not go far enough to provide children with the specialist support they need.Read more
Leading children’s charity ECPAT UK will mark today’s Anti-Slavery Day (18th October 2017) with the release of an animated film aimed at tackling the growing issue of Vietnamese children being trafficked to the UK for cannabis cultivation.Read more
Calling all lawyers, advocates, social workers and more! ECPAT UK, as part of the European Commission funded ReACT Project, is offering two free online tutorials for those working with trafficked children.Read more
The scale of human trafficking and modern slavery is far larger than “anyone had previously thought”, the National Crime Agency has said today. Tens of thousands of adults and children, according to NCA Director of Vulnerabilities, Will Kerr, are likely to have been trafficked into modern slavery and human trafficking in the UK.Read more
The UK should improve its response to child trafficking by strengthening specialist support systems, the US State Department has said.Read more
Modern slavery, human trafficking and other forms of child exploitation are likely to increase in the UK over the next few years, according to a new report by the National Crime Agency (NCA).Read more
ECPAT UK is calling on governments across the world to honour the commitment to eradicate child labour on global World Day Against Child Labour (12th June).Read more
The Mayor and Deputy Mayor for Policing & Crime have answered calls from NGOs to outline their plans to strengthen London’s response to human trafficking, after a staggering 260% increase in the number of victim referrals in the capital.Read more
Child trafficking referrals increased by 30% to 1,278 in 2016, the highest on record according to the latest figures from the National Crime Agency.Read more
ECPAT UK has been selected by the government to deliver an innovative project aimed at improving the local response to child trafficking and all forms of modern slavery and exploitation.Read more