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Training for healthcare professionals

Safeguarding Victims of Modern Slavery

Transforming the healthcare response to Modern Slavery, ensuring victims and survivors receive excellent trauma-informed care. Evidence-based training that equips front line healthcare professionals with consultation skills to identify, support and safeguard victims and survivors.

10,000's

Tens of thousands of victims of human trafficking are living and working in the UK

30%

30% of victims present in healthcare services whilst or shortly after their time in slavery

1 in 8

1 in 8 healthcare professionals reported previous contact with a patient they knew or suspected of having been trafficked

8 in 10

8 in 10 felt they hadn’t had enough training

95%

95% were unaware of the scale of trafficking in the UK

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Request a booking from our experts that can help you and your team

About our training

Victims of modern slavery are presenting in healthcare settings and are not receiving the safeguarding and care they need.

The solution is not just about raising awareness. VITA training aims to improve identification, support and care for victims by equipping healthcare professionals to know what to do. It delivers practical, user-friendly, evidence-based guidance.

This training has been created and refined by doctors, who regularly apply the techniques and skills they teach during their own clinical practice.

More than 1000 healthcare professionals have attended VITA training. Our training has been shown to improve trainees knowledge and confidence particularly in identification, conducting the consultation and referral.

Bespoke tailored training is available for NHS Foundation Trusts, General Practices, healthcare professional trainee programmes and other health services.

Training packages

Training presentation

  • Unlimited group sizes.
  • 1 or 2 hours presentation lengths

Simulation training

  • The above presentation with simulated consultations
  • Minimum of 5 trainees required, maximum of 40
  • Approximately 1 facilitator required for every 5 trainees
  • Actors and facilitators provided

Training with video scenarios

  • The above training presentation with video scenarios
  • Unlimited group sizes
  • Facilitators optional

Hand-out document

  • For all VITA Trainees

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Our team of experts

Dr Rosie Riley

Dr Rosie Riley BSc MBChB

Founder and CEO of VITA.
NHS England Clinical Entrepreneur.
Junior Clinical Fellow in Emergency Medicine

Rosie is a Clinical Fellow in Emergency Medicine. She graduated with a medical degree and a BSc in Global Health from the University of Bristol. She founded VITA in 2015 and is passionate about a sustainable, evidence-based, survivor-focused healthcare response.

Rosie advised and contributed to the Home Office “Modern Slavery Act 2015 - Statutory Guidance”, is a core member of the NHS England Modern Slavery Network and is a member of the Victim Support Group of the Modern Slavery Strategy and Implementation Group shaping national support for victims. She was appointed as an NHS England Clinical Entrepreneur in September 2018.

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Dr Laura C N Wood

Dr Laura C N Wood BM MA MRCPCH

Paediatrician.
ESRC PhD researcher with Special Interest in Child and Family Modern Slavery

Laura is a paediatrician with experience caring for children and families in challenging circumstances, including children who have experienced abuse, trauma, modern slavery and trafficking. The complex challenges involved in caring for these children and their families well led Laura into further training. She is now a researcher at Lancaster University where she has gained distinctions at postgraduate certificate and masters level in clinical and sociological research. Laura is now completing her PhD in the health response to child trafficking. Laura’s work is supporting the development of VITA’s educational material, research and academic engagement.

Testimonials

VITA training is evidence-based and prepares candidates for real-life encounters with victims (often by using simulated consultations). Not only will this training improve performance in appropriately managing the complex human trafficking cases who present to our services, it significantly improves communication skills overall and forces providers to reflect on how they are interacting with all of their patients.

— Specialty Registrar, Emergency Medicine

This training should be mandatory

— Consultant, Acute General Medicine

I felt more confident dealing with (a case of a patient being identified as trafficked) following the training because I had greater understanding of the situations people who have been trafficked have to deal with; previous life situations, reasons for coming to UK and the reality of the situations they find themselves in compared to hopes and dreams they may have had, how frightened and vulnerable they must feel.

— Practice nurse, General Practice

I have experienced plenty of compulsory online training as part of the induction process for each new hospital. Safeguarding training is always one of the tickboxes, and often fairly far back in the queue. This is completely unacceptable as an undeniably crucial skill set for frontliners is being buried under a mountain of paperwork and bureaucracy. It is wonderful to see Dr. Riley and her team tackling this issue head on by providing evidence-based and engaging training for all providers that encounter human trafficking - an issue that we should be far more aware of in the healthcare community.

— Specialty Registrar, Emergency Medicine

Taking part in VITA training changed my everyday approach to patient interaction. Dr Riley’s presentation highlighted the necessity of including safeguarding awareness in our daily work and provided tools of how to assess a patient’s situation in a safe and helpful way. More than any other safeguarding training I’ve had beforehand, VITA training enabled me to include this utterly important aspect into my patient assessment. I highly recommend it.

— Junior Doctor, Emergency Medicine
Best Poster

Best poster in Education category

Royal College of General Practice Annual Primary Care conference and exhibition 2017

Best Poster

Rosie Riley

NHS England Clinical Entrepreneur

Resources

Human trafficking and health: a cross-sectional survey of NHS professionals’ contact with victims of human trafficking.

Ross C, Dimitrova S, Howard LM, et al, 2015

Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: forced labour and forced marriage.

International Labour Office and Walk Free Foundation in partnership with International Organization for Migration, 2017

Caring For Trafficked Persons: guidance for health providers.

International Organization for Migration, Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, 2009

Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking: National Referral Mechanism Statistics.

National Crime Agency, End of Year Summary 2017

Contact Us

For more information or to see how you can get involved, contact the VITA team.

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E-Learning
Coming soon

E-learning

We are in the process of creating our online e-learning module. This module will be a useful training resource both alone and as part of our training packages. Via an interactive format, VITA e-learning re-enforces material delivered in the training presentation and simulation.

The module includes a virtual clinic, allowing trainees to put their consultation skills into practice.

Register interest in our e-learning module

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