Keeping yourself and others safe

Exploitation

In Bolton, we adopt a whole system approach to tackling Exploitation, underpinned by the key principle that “Safeguarding is everyone’s business”. The central aim of our whole system approach is to prevent Exploitation from happening at all. To do this, we ensure that all agencies providing services are equipped with the right safeguarding knowledge and skills to intervene as early as possible. Effective prevention involves partners across all sectors working at local, national and international levels. Professionals must be skilled in recognising and responding to the signs of exploitation and be confident in talking about it. Our prevention strategies also include raising awareness through communications and engagement activities. 

Either opportunistic or premeditated, exploitation describes the abusive act of unfairly manipulating someone for profit or personal gain. This includes Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, where individuals are moved for the purpose of exploitation. 

Modern slavery is a complex crime that takes a number of different forms, and which violates human rights. It is an umbrella term encompassing different form of exploitation such as slavery, servitude, forced or compulsory labour and human trafficking. 

Article 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998 protects individual's rights from being held in slavery or servitude or being made to do forced or compulsory labour.  

At Bolton, in order to tackle Exploitation, it would mean tackling it beyond the capacity and capability of any one agency. By using our Multi-agency approach of working together and information sharing at a strategic and operational level, all partners would be working together to protect and safeguard adults, and also support all victims and survivors. This will ensure that emerging risks and threats are responded to quickly and appropriately. We ensure that information sharing is robust when exploitation risk is identified, and we use intelligence to strengthen our partnership approach. We learn from case reviews and feedback from people with lived experience (voice of the adult) to embed best practice approaches that supports victims and survivors of exploitation to rebuild their lives by improving the support that is available. 

For further information visit the About adult safeguarding – Bolton Council and the bolton-policies-and-procedures for professionals.