Preventing re-trafficking is a crucial part of the modern slavery prevention efforts, placing it on the continuum that also includes interventions before exploitation occurred, in its early stages and treating harms resulting from it.
Survivors of modern slavery often face socioeconomic challenges that increase their risk of being trafficked again. These include unstable housing, immigration insecurity, and, crucially, lack of access to employment to support themselves.
While employment is widely recognised for its psychological, social, and economic benefits - including improved mental health, confidence and connection with communities - there is little empirical research on how employability interventions specifically reduce the risk of re-trafficking.
A research project, led by the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham in partnership with the Sophie Hayes Foundation (SHF), evaluates the role of employability programmes to prevent re-trafficking amongst survivors of modern slavery in the UK.
The SHF has delivered employability programmes since 2011, providing a comprehensive and trauma-informed service for women survivors that includes foundational skills training (such as CV-writing and interview skills), digital literacy, English language development, and personal mentoring.
Preliminary feedback from past participants highlights the programme’s effectiveness: 94% reported a significant positive impact, 77% found the practical support valuable, and 72% saw improvements in mental health and confidence.
This project is building on this data to understand how developing employability skills can reduce the harms associated with exploitation and develop individual strengths to prevent re-trafficking. The project aims to analyse the programme’s immediate, short-, medium- and long-term effects and engages both current and former SHF programme participants, including those without the right to work.
The research uses a mixed-methods design, including a desk-based review of similar interventions, longitudinal evaluation of a group of women going through the programme in 2025 (using surveys, SHF routine data, and interviews), in-depth interviews with past participants to explore long-term behavioural and societal impacts, as well as economic analysis of costs and outcomes to assess programme efficiency.
A lived experience advisory panel is to be recruited from the SHF’s ‘CREW’ (creative, resilience, empowered women) community - a lived experience group that provides wrap-around support to women engaged with the organisation - and a peer researcher working alongside the academic team are playing central roles in project design, delivery, and dissemination of this research.
Research team: Dr Nicola Wright (School of Health Sciences and Rights Lab, University of Nottingham) , Dr Elizabeth Such (School of Health Sciences and Rights Lab, University of Nottingham), Dr Tessa Langley (School of Medicine, University of Nottingham), Emily Death, Cilla, Caitlin Battersby (Sophie Hayes Foundation).
Call for evidence
The research team is calling for evidence to help inform the literature review part of the project. To be able to understand about the role employment plays in preventing re-trafficking, the team needs to supplement the academic literature with reports, evaluations and policy documents. The researchers are particularly interested in any information related to costs and benefits associated employment support, including employability programmes. If you have or know of any documents, please email Dr Nicola Wright at nicola.wright@nottingham.ac.uk.
