Our modern slavery statement for 2023 -2024
This statement is made with reference to Section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes the Leeds Mencap’s Anti-slavery and Human Trafficking Statement for the financial year ending October 2021.
As an organisation with around £1m and no trading arm, we are not legally required to provide an annual statement but recognise the value of this for any organisation looking to formally contract our services.
Modern slavery is a crime and a violation of fundamental human rights. It takes various forms, such as slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour and human trafficking, all of which have in common the deprivation of a person’s liberty by another in order to exploit them for personal or commercial gain.
Leeds Mencap has a zero-tolerance approach to modern slavery, and we are committed to acting ethically and with integrity in all our business dealings and relationships and to ensure wherever possible that modern slavery is not taking place anywhere in our own business or in any of our supply chains.
We are committed to ensuring there is transparency in our own organisation in our approach to tackling modern slavery and to putting effective systems and controls in place to safeguard against any form of modern slavery taking place within the business or our supply chain.
We expect the same high standards from any contractors, suppliers and other business partners, and in turn we expect that our suppliers will hold their own suppliers to the same high standards.
We have a number of policies to ensure that we are operating in an ethical and transparent manner. These include:
- Safer recruitment policy: we operate a robust recruitment policy, including conducting enhanced DBS checks and eligibility to work in the UK checks when recruiting new staff, in order to help safeguard against human trafficking or individuals being forced to work against their will.
- Whistleblowing policy: we aim to ensure that all employees know that they can raise concerns about how colleagues are being treated, or practices within our partners or suppliers, without fear of reprisals.
- Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults Policy: our focus is to provide direct services to vulnerable children and adults and their families and carers. All our staff are trained in safeguarding practices in line with Leeds Safeguarding Children Partnership. Modern slavery and human trafficking is recognised in Leeds Mencap Safeguarding Handbook as a form of abuse.
To date we have seen no evidence of modern slavery in our organisation or supply chains. We do not subcontract and our suppliers are either large national organisations, such as energy suppliers or supermarkets, or small local businesses. However, we recognise that modern slavery is very much a hidden crime and we are committed to continuing to focus on understanding our risk exposure and putting in place any required measures to mitigate risk.
Leeds Mencap will continue to ensure staff awareness of modern slavery in order that they can recognise and report any incidents of concern.
This policy was last updated in January 2024
