Piloting Devolved Decision Making for Child Victims of Modern Slavery
The Home Office is seeking to award grant funding to local authorities within England, Scotland and Wales with responsibility for children’s social care and in Northern Ireland, the Department of Health or Health and Social Care Trusts who hold responsibility for children’s social care. This funding is available to empower those responsible for children’s social care to make decisions about whether children are victims of modern slavery in conjunction with local safeguarding partners. The total available grant funding for 25/26 will be up to up to £450,000 for a maximum of 10 pilot sites.
- Opening date: (Midnight)
- Closing date:
Contents
Summary
The Home Office is seeking to award grant funding to local authorities within England, Scotland and Wales with responsibility for children’s social care and in Northern Ireland, the Department of Health or Health and Social Care Trusts who hold responsibility for children’s social care. This funding is available to empower those responsible for children’s social care to make decisions about whether children are victims of modern slavery in conjunction with local safeguarding partners. The total available grant funding for 25/26 will be up to up to £450,000 for a maximum of 10 pilot sites.
Applicants may only submit one bid, as an individual bid or as part of a joint or consortium bid. Where a joint or consortium bid is submitted it is the responsibility of the lead local authority or lead Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland to ensure its partner local authorities or Health and Social Care Trust have not submitted an individual bid. If more than one bid is submitted by an applicant, the Home Office reserves the right to exclude one or both bids.
For the purpose of this document, all future reference to local authorities assumes the inclusion of Northern Ireland’s comparable body, The Health and Social Care Trusts and The Department of Health.
Purpose of Pilots for Devolved Decision-Making Pilots
The purpose of the pilot is to test different approaches to identifying children as victims of modern slavery, through local multi-agency decision making in various sites across the UK. The funding will be awarded to empower local authorities to integrate decisions about whether children are victims of modern slavery within their existing safeguarding structures.
Some of key requirements to be followed by the pilot sites are set out below. Full requirements are detailed in the Statement of Outcomes:
· Both the Reasonable Grounds and Conclusive Grounds decisions must be taken by safeguarding partners through a multi-agency structure at one or multiple meetings. In line with the Working Together to Safeguard Children (2018), this will be with representation from the three safeguarding partners – the local authority/ Health and Social Care Trusts, health and police – as a minimum. Where possible, decisions should be taken through an existing multi-agency structure. Engagement with local authorities and NGOs in the design of these pilots has determined that, to avoid potential conflicts of interest, the chair of the multi-agency structure taking the decision should not be the lead social worker involved in the child’s care where a social worker is allocated to the case.
· Pilot sites must make decisions as to whether a child is a victim of modern slavery in accordance with the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and guidance provided to pilot sites. This requires two decisions to be made:
o A Reasonable Grounds (RG) decision where there are reasonable grounds to believe that the individual is a victim
o A Conclusive Grounds (CG) decision as to whether, on the balance of probabilities, a child is a victim of modern slavery
Both decisions should be taken as soon as there is sufficient evidence to do so. An RG decision should be made no later than 45 days from the date the pilot site receives the referral. A positive CG decision can also be made at the same meeting if there is sufficient evidence to do so. If a pilot site deems the evidence gathered for the first multi-agency meeting is insufficient for a positive CG decision to be taken at the same meeting, then a second meeting to make the CG decision should take place no later than 45 days after the first meeting (90 days in total).
· The outcome of a Reasonable Grounds and/or a Conclusive Grounds decision must be reported to the Home Office within one working day using the Reporting Template provided.
· Any meetings where decisions are taken should have minutes taken.
· Once a final Conclusive Grounds decision has been made, and following any quality assurance that is required, the Home Office will issue a decision letter for the case outcome.
· These pilots will not replace any existing devolved legislation.
Please note: In all cases children should continue to receive appropriate safeguarding and support in line with current statutory requirements irrespective of the stage they are at in the decision-making process.
Eligibility
The fund is open to all local authorities within England, Scotland and Wales with responsibility for children’s social care and in Northern Ireland, The Department of Health who hold responsibility for children’s social care.
The Home Office welcomes applications for funding from either individual local authorities or local authorities/ Health and Social Care Trusts acting together as a consortium.
The Home Office is seeking to award funding for up to 10 additional pilot sites to empower local authorities with responsibility for children’s social care to make decisions about whether children are victims of modern slavery in conjunction with local safeguarding partners. This funding will enable local authorities to test different approaches to embed decision making processes to determine whether children are victims of modern slavery within their existing multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.
In the case of a consortium bid, one local authority/ Health and Social Care Trust will be nominated as the lead authority/ Health and Social Care Trust and will need to have agreement from all partner local authorities/ Health and Social Care Trusts before bidding.
Applicants will only be eligible for one grant of funding up to a maximum of 1 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) role. However, the Home Office will consider higher bids in exceptional circumstances up to a maximum of an additional 0.5 FTE role. These exceptional circumstances will require robust, evidence-based justification.
Objectives
The pilot aims to deliver against the Home Office Outcome Delivery Plan to ‘Reducing Crime’, including ‘particularly high harm and serious and organised crime’, and ‘increasing support for victims and potential victims of crime’, by testing whether determining if a child is a victim of modern slavery within existing safeguarding structures is a better model for making modern slavery decisions for children.
An integral part of the government’s modern slavery strategy is to identify and support potential victims of modern slavery, enabling them to recover. Multi-agency working is key to achieving this for children, particularly as the safeguarding and support for potential and confirmed child victims is provided by local authorities in their statutory duties, which is separate to the NRM. Failure to deliver a prompt multi-agency approach can lead to children who have been confirmed as victims of modern slavery being exposed to further harm, going missing and potentially being re-trafficked.
The pilot aims to provide as much flexibility as possible in how the pilot sites operate. However, there are some elements that will be common to decision-making across all pilot sites to ensure consistency and alignment with published guidance. Decision-making for the pilot follows the same process and is made in accordance with the same definitions and thresholds as set out in the Modern slavery: statutory guidance for England and Wales (under s49 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015) and non-statutory guidance for Scotland and Northern Ireland Chapter 7 and Annex E. Devolving Child Decision-Making Pilot Programme: Decision-Making Guidance for Pilot Sites has been published to set out detailed guidance for decision makers in the pilot. It replaces Annex E of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 Statutory Guidance for the purposes of making decisions within the pilot. This guidance currently covers existing pilot sites in England, Scotland and Wales. Should a future pilot site be based in Northern Ireland, the existing guidance is broadly applicable, however updated guidance will be written and published to cover this devolved nation as well.
The Home Office is seeking to award funding for up to 10 additional pilot sites to empower local authorities with responsibility for children’s social care to make decisions about whether children are victims of modern slavery in conjunction with local safeguarding partners. This funding will enable local authorities to test different approaches to embed decision making processes to determine whether children are victims of modern slavery within their existing multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.
Dates
Grant competition 9th April 2025
Deadline for bids 14th May 2025
Funding start date 1st July 2025
Funding end date 31st March 2026
*The dates listed may be subject to change.
How to apply
DO NOT click the 'Start New Application' button on the main page, this will not give you acces. Please follow the steps outlined below.
In order to bid for funding, bidders will first need to register on the portal via the following link:
https://homeoffice.app.jaggaer.com/web/login.html
Bidders should be approved for usage within 24 hours of registering on the system.
After clicking on the eSourcing portal link, it should take you to the home page. On the left-hand side of this page, just below the login boxes, there is an option to register.
To register as a supplier, you will need to provide information which will include:
· the full legal name of your organisation
· your DUNS number – a unique nine-digit number provided to organisations free of charge by Dun & Bradstreet
· profile information describing your organisation and the size of your business
If you have any difficulties registering on the system, then you should contact the Supplier eSourcing Helpdesk: customersupport@jaggaer.com
The HO Jaggaer eSourcing portal is independent of other eSourcing portals. Therefore, if you have registered on the Crown Commercial Service Jaggaer eSourcing portal, you will also need to register on the HO Jaggaer eSourcing portal.
Please note that bids will only be accepted via the HO eSourcing portal. Any bids received outside of this system will not be considered by the Authority.
Please note that registering for access to the eSourcing tool will not make you a Home Office supplier. To be considered for award of funding you must first respond to an opportunity.
Once registered as a supplier on the portal please send a notification e-mail to childmspilots@homeoffice.gov.uk to request access to the associated documents for the ‘Piloting devolved decision making for child victims of modern slavery’ Fund.
In your e-mail request please provide the following information:
Email subject line " Piloting devolved decision making for child victims of Modern Slavery’ Fund - Portal Access"
Organisation Name (as registered on Jaggaer)
Organisation Type
Contact Name (as registered on Jaggaer)
Email address
Further information about procurement at the Home Office can be found on the gov.uk website.