West Midlands Anti-Slavery Network: NRM Explanatory Document: With funding from the West Midlands OPCC via the Modern Slavery Police Transformation Unit in 2019, West Midlands Anti-Slavery Network have produced a multi lingual explanatory document which explains in detail, the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) for use by First Responders for survivors of Modern Slavery at the point of identification in the West Midlands. It will include realistic and accurate information from professionals about the process a survivor could expect if they were to consent to an NRM referral and the potential outcomes and opportunities if they decided not to consent to an NRM referral.
Although training on the NRM referral form itself is already available, there is very little knowledge within First Responder Organisations (FRO) of what happens to a victim once a positive Reasonable Grounds Decision is made and what a survivors rights and entitlements are to support. Hence information provided to the survivor is often scant or inaccurate, leading to uninformed consent to enter the NRM.
The Need: This project is in response to the recognition that survivors sometimes consent and enter the NRM not fully understanding the process, sometimes having little to no understanding of what the future holds for them as a result. This is especially if the NRM and support options are not explained in sufficient detail at the point of identification and completion of the NRM form. It’s also known that some survivors do not know they are in the NRM and even potentially did not have the capacity to consent in the first instance. Some survivors are going missing from care and support providers days after they enter the NRM, for reasons including what they consented to when referring is not the reality of what they are given on arrival.
Implementation: Will be by way of two planned awareness and training sessions together with the OPCC, West Midlands Police, Police Transformation Program, Public Health England, the West Midlands MSHT Strategic Board and the West Midlands Anti-Slavery Network
The English version of the NRM document is available (see above) and the translated versions are being made available in the coming weeks.
Contributors: West Midlands Anti-Slavery Network are grateful for the time and feedback from Megan Bethel of South Yorkshire Modern Slavery Partnership, DI David Andrews of Warwickshire Police and Morgan Mead of British Red Cross in the drafting of the document.
We are extremely thankful for the generous time and expertise given by volunteer translators who have aided us to translate the document into more languages, which has allowed us to save the limited budget for the harder to access languages. Special thanks to Paul Mcanulty, Angelina Kotikova, Laura Kanskij, Madara Freimane and Alexandra Szamaranzka of Staffline, Tomas Gallik of Hope for Justice, and Minh Dang of Survivor Alliance.
All translations have been proofed by qualified translators from Clearvoice to ensure accuracy.
A special thanks to Angela O’Brien of Wates Living for designing our leaflet, making many drafts and amendments and to Nigel Smith of Cardboard Zebra for putting together the translated material into the document.