Hestia's Modern Slavery Statement - September 2025 

As the leading provider of support to survivors of modern slavery in London and the South East, Hestia is committed to tackling this brutal crime in all its forms and advocating for changes that prioritise the health, wellbeing, and recovery of survivors. 

About Hestia 

Hestia is a registered charity and a company limited by guarantee. Our mission is to support adults and children who have experienced crisis and trauma to find safety, hope, and purpose. 

We specialised in trauma and resilience-informed support for people in crisis or who have experienced trauma – including survivors of modern slavery, adults and children escaping domestic abuse, people needing support with their mental health and people leaving prison.  

Guided by the reality of our service users’ experience, we bring their voice to the attention of policy makers, partners and communities and use our insight to push for the change that matters.  

In the financial year 2024-5, Hestia supported 22,606 adults and children through various accommodation and community-based programs. Our services were delivered by 772 permanent staff, with additional support from agency and bank workers, and 1,500 volunteers. Hestia’s annual turnover rose by approximately 5% over the financial year ending March 31 2025, to £56.8 million. 

Further information on our impact and accounts can be found on our website in our Annual Reviews and Financial Statements. 

Hestia's role in improving the situation for survivors in the UK 

An estimated 122,000 people in the UK are trapped in modern slavery. Since 2011, Hestia’s modern slavery service has provided support to meet the emotional and practical needs of  survivors and their children and empower them to recover.  

We also convene sector leaders and engage policymakers to advocate for a survivor-first approach to modern slavery policy and services. Working closely with The Salvation Army, we support individuals referred through the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), ensuring they receive the care and support they need. 

In 2024–25, we supported 2,341 potential victims through our safe houses and community outreach programmes and supported over 741 dependent children affected by modern slavery. 

Recognising the complexity of recovery, our Modern Slavery Innovation Team delivers evidence-based support that includes: 

• Specialist child and family services 

• Community integration, volunteering, and employability opportunities 

• Access to free legal advice being piloted through our Legal Services Hub 

• Activities to combat isolation with befriending support  

• A donor-funded Ambassadorship Programme, training survivors as lived experience consultants to support awareness and advocacy 

Much of this work is made possible through philanthropic support. 

Our flagship Art is Freedom exhibition and Underground Lives research series raise awareness and provide survivors with a platform for their voices. In 2024, the seventh Art is Freedom exhibition reached an estimated 7.3 million people. We also delivered 43 modern slavery awareness training sessions to over 920 individuals in external organisations. 

Policy and Research 

As a leading voice on modern slavery in London, we are committed to ensuring that survivor experiences inform policy and service development. 

On April 1, 2025, Hestia, alongside The Salvation Army and eleven other organisations, launched our updated manifesto to ‘put victims first’ in Parliament. Hosted by Carolyn Harris MP, the event was attended by MPs, peers, survivors, and sector representatives. It called on the government to reform the UK’s approach to modern slavery and prioritise victim support. 

The government has recently introduced the Crime and Policing Bill and the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2025, both of which have implications for survivors. 

• The Crime and Policing Bill includes welcome reforms, such as criminalising child criminal exploitation and cuckooing or ‘home takeover’, that allow survivors whose homes are exploited for criminal activity to seek justice. Survivors in our services report feeling unsafe while perpetrators go unpunished. These reforms offer long-overdue recognition of their trauma. 

• The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill repeals significant sections of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. However, the proposed changes fail to restore the full support survivors need. Therefore we continue to work with parliamentarians to push for the repeal of section 29 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, and some sections of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. 

• In early autumn, we published ‘On Our Streets: The changing face of modern slavery’, combining survivor stories, sector data, and public perceptions to highlight how and where modern slavery occurs today. 

Our Underground Lives series explores the experiences of hundreds of survivors, focusing on issues such as pregnancy and modern slavery, the needs of male victims, criminal exploitation and dependent children, employment opportunities for survivors whilst in the NRM, the experiences of Albanian survivors, and – in 2024 - the impact of the right mental health support on survivors. These reports help inform the public, policy makers, service providers, and sector experts.  

Hestia is one of twelve organisations participating in the Home Office’s Modern Slavery Engagement Forum, helping shape future strategy. The Government plan to undertake a review of the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) and victim identification, and it is vital that they ensure impactful and transformational support for survivors. Currently individuals in the NRM await a decision which no longer holds promise of a safer future, and brings their support abruptly to an end, often with no recourse to public funds or right to stay despite receiving a positive conclusive grounds decision. We will actively take part in this consultation and ensure service users have their voices heard. Our 2025 Underground Lives report, due to be launched in October, will explore this issue further. 

As one of the members of the Modern Slavery Engagement Forum, we are also proud to have taken part in two roundtables with Minister Phillips, Minister for VAWG and Safeguarding who currently holds the modern slavery brief. In October 2025, together with other MSEF members, we will present a 10-year strategic vision to tackle modern slavery in the UK. 

We also remain a Designated Body for Police Super Complaints and submitted the first-ever complaint focused on modern slavery in 2019. The evidence showed systemic failings in safeguarding and victim engagement by the police - issues we continue to raise and challenge. 

Supply Chains 

Hestia is midway through a four-year procurement transformation to strengthen scrutiny of supplier practices and minimise modern slavery risk in all related supply chains. The project has two pillars: 

1. All suppliers must meet Hestia’s approval criteria before an order can be placed with them and their invoices processed for payment. Our approval processes are now more rigorous. We identify suppliers where risks of modern slavery in their supply chains are high; these suppliers will be required to provide and publish competent Modern Slavery Statements and we will discuss our concerns directly with them  

2. As we continue to centralise procurement via corporate contracts, we have better knowledge of and relationships with our suppliers. We have begun to send them regular newsletters about Hestia’s modern slavery work with the aim of widening awareness of the issue and solutions in other organisations 

Key risk areas 

Based on our work to-date the main areas of risk we have identified are: 

• Increased rate of negative conclusive grounds decisions, increased vulnerability and destitution of service users at point of move-on linked to Home Office decisions and new destitution policy: more of our service users are receiving negative conclusive grounds decisions and need to move on from the service within 14 days, often with no access to other services. We are proud that close to 60% of our service users receive a positive conclusive grounds decision (compared to the national average of 48%) but remain deeply concerned for the service users receiving negative decisions, oftentimes due to limited information or speed of decision-making. It is leading to higher rates of homelessness and destitution, and Hestia has taken proactive steps to prevent anyone from being destitute by keeping residents in safehouses where possible until a sustainable move-on pathway is in place.  

• Supply Chains:  Risks remain highest in devolved procurement areas. Our Procurement Project ensures central screening of new suppliers to reduce exposure. 

• Vulnerability of clients linked to the cost-of-living crisis: We continue to see financial vulnerability amongst many clients, including lack of access to basic essentials, safe housing and legal support. This makes them vulnerable to further exploitation - in particular, labour exploitation and cuckooing (home takeover). We are addressing this through supporting access to free legal support through our Legal Services Hub; providing basic supplies; and raising the need for access to safe housing with political decision makers and commissioners. 

2025-6 priorities 

Over the coming year we will continue to advocate for and enable the changes in policy and practice that will improve the wellbeing of survivors of modern slavery. These include:  

• Ensuring more potential victims have access to support services: legislative changes over the last 3 years have led to changes to potential victims’ eligibility to access support services like Hestia’s. This is an uncomfortable reality when we know referrals to the NRM are the highest they have ever been. Hestia will continue to advocate for revisions to legislation to restore all potential victims’ access to services, ensuring more people have access to lifechanging support.  

• Partaking in the Home Office consultation on victim identification and NRM reform: We will actively take part and create opportunities for people with lived experience to have their voices heard. Our research will also support this call for evidence.  

• Providing comprehensive support to our survivors as early as possible: The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 reduces the time available for support, increases the threshold for people to access support, and introduces provisions to disqualify people from support. We continue to closely monitor the impact on the number of people referred to services and deliver support to them as swiftly as possible by redesigning our service delivery model. We have transformed our service user journey to allow us to better respond to the increased complexity of need observed, whilst equipping survivors with tools for independence as quickly as possible. 

• Continuation of our Community Integration service:  It is likely that survivors will be entitled to lower levels of support and will exit services faster than previously. Therefore, we are committed to continue to deliver a community integration service which includes a befriending volunteer programme, and activities aimed at increasing survivor’s self-confidence, joy, confidence, and resilience and supporting their independence. 

• Legal Support: Legal advice and representation can play a pivotal role in supporting people to rebuild their lives after crisis - from getting compensation for criminal injuries, securing housing entitlement, or ensuring children are safe. We are bringing together sector and legal experts to design and pilot our innovative Legal Services Hub to help more people access timely and free legal support.

• Advocating for and championing the needs of modern slavery victims in the UK: Ongoing advocacy for the improvements set out in our Manifesto for change – including amendments to the Borders, Security and Immigration Bill, the review of the NRM, the right to work, and entitlement to specialist support and leave once survivors are recognised as official victims.  

• Continuing to create emotional connection: Motivation to tackle modern slavery is deeply linked to people’s emotional commitment to the issue. We will continue to share survivors’ stories with the public and across our internal and external networks to bring their voices and experience to the fore. Key engagements include our next Underground Lives publication and our Art is Freedom event whose 2025 theme is ‘Seen and Heard’, capturing survivors’ collective call to be listened to and understood – not only as survivors, but as artists, individuals, and changemakers. In 2024, public awareness of both modern slavery and Hestia’s work grew significantly, and we are committed to building on this momentum in 2025. 

 

Approved by Hestia’s Board of Trustees on 15 July 2025

Signed by Director of Fundraising and Communications