Next Steps

Our Next Steps project is well and truly under way. Just a reminder: this is our Comic Relief funded project taking place over the next two-years. It sees us working in partnership with the London Metropolitan Police Service and the POPPY Project to produce a DVD resource for women who have been trafficked into forced prostitution. The DVD will explore the issue of giving evidence in court with the aim of increasing conviction rates of traffickers whilst safeguarding the women. In the second year of the project we will work in partnership with the UK Human Trafficking Centre, Anti-Slavery International, the Crown Prosecution Service and the UK Border Agency to disseminate the DVD nationally and to train groups in its use.

So far we've met with our key partners who are all on board and ready to join us at the launch of the project which will take place at Lovells, who've kindly given us a space for free, on 11 June.

We've also set up a social media network for the project team and key partners. We hope to open it up to all stakeholders, however, this is still under debate as we are considering security and privacy issues. The purpose of the network is to open up a dialogue between members and build up a space of collective expertise. We really believe that in developing a critical mass of people in the sector who work in partnership and communicate across professional divides, we are putting the project in a far stronger position to make a real difference.

Workshops with the women, police, UKBA staff and others will begin in July these will be led by Rose and co-facilitated with Keren our facilitator whose worked on many other projects with us.

So far I've been project managing, but as some of you may know, I'm off on maternity leave at the beginning of July and so will hand over the project management to our partnership coordinator and long time co-facilitator Katherine Mann.

We'll keep you posted as the project develops.

Amy