Modern slavery statement

Last updated: 14 May 2025

Introduction

Modern slavery is an international crime which has been described as the greatest human rights issue of our time.

It is essential that due diligence is applied to root out modern slavery and ensure that taxpayers’ money is not spent with third parties who exploit vulnerable people.

The way we conduct our activities is crucial in preventing and eliminating modern slavery, particularly commercial activities throughout our supply chains.

As a small Executive Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) it is not a mandatory requirement for Social Work England to publish a modern slavery statement.

However, Social Work England recognises the seriousness and the impact of modern slavery across the world today. We have therefore chosen voluntarily to set out our approach and our commitment to tackling and eliminating modern slavery from our supply chains, through publication of this statement.

Scope of this statement

This modern slavery statement is our first such statement, and relates to the period of 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026.

The statement covers the steps Social Work England has implemented already, and our aims and objectives for this next reporting year.

Organisational structure and supply chains

Social Work England is a specialist body taking a new approach to regulating social workers in their vital roles. We believe in the power of collaboration and share a common goal with those we regulate to protect the public, enable positive change and ultimately improve people’s lives.

Our core role is to regulate. We set educational and professional standards for social workers in England. We maintain a social work register and investigate concerns about social workers.

Our aim is to be a sustainable organisation, one that operates with minimal negative impacts and helps solve societal and environmental challenges.

Our values are important to us. They shape and steer our interactions with each other and with everyone that we come into contact with, both internally and externally. Our modern slavery statement and internal control processes align with these values. Modern slavery is a crime and a violation of 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.

In order to run our organisation and deliver its objectives, there is a need for us to engage with different external suppliers. These suppliers deliver goods and service including the hosting and development of our critical IT services. We also have commercial arrangements in place for building costs, software licences and legal support. We are committed to making commercially and socially responsible decisions that have a positive impact on the people and the world around us and to have effective systems, processes and controls in place to safeguard against any form of modern slavery taking place within our supply chain.

Social Work England recognises that managing modern slavery risks effectively in our supply chain is a difficult challenge requiring careful management and due diligence throughout the procurement lifecycle.

We work collaboratively with suppliers to understand their working practises to assure ourselves that we have applied rigorous due diligence when procuring goods and services.

Policies, due diligence and risk management

Our commercial team promotes the use of compliant government procurement frameworks as our preferred route to market when purchasing our goods and services.

The suppliers on framework agreements have already been subject to rigorous due diligence through application of the Modern Slavery Assessment Tool (MSAT) by the awarding organisation.

When undertaking new procurements we apply best practice to identify high risk areas as described in the Government Commercial Function’s modern slavery guidance and use the Home Office’s Modern Slavery Prioritisation Tool.

We ensure that all business cases for new procurements include an analysis of modern slavery risks.

As part of our own internal commercial policies and procedures where the risk of modern slavery is deemed high, despite the rigor already applied at framework stage, Social Work England will also ask the winning supplier to complete a further MSAT. This provides Social Work England with confidence and assurance that the risk of modern slavery in our supply chain is minimised.

In situations of high risk where there is no suitable framework available to meet our needs, suppliers must successfully complete a MSAT as part of the tender process.

Existing contracts are reviewed annually to ensure that any contracts classified as high risk of modern slavery are managed appropriately. This review is undertaken in conjunction with contract managers.

The commercial team collaborates internally with equality, diversity and inclusion experts in designing and using appropriate wording in our evaluation criteria which is used as part of our selection process.

Due to the nature of our business, the type of goods and services we procure and the due diligence we apply, we believe the risk of modern slavery occurring within our supply chains is extremely low.

Modern slavery training and awareness

Through our learning and development platform, Grow, Social Work England has rolled out a number of mandatory training modules that all staff must complete. The commercial team will also promote this training as part of its regular discussions with internal stakeholders.

In addition to this, our internal policies and the measures below support awareness of human rights risks and how they can be identified and addressed.

Our staff have access via our intranet to the following policies:

• Whistleblowing
• Procurement
• Code of conduct
• Modern slavery
  

Goals and key performance indicators

We will continue to build capability across Social Work England particularly in contract management, so that our staff understand what steps they should be taking to prevent modern slavery in government supply chains. To achieve this, in 2025/26 we will:

• Continue to support and build the knowledge, skills and confidence of our commercial team and contract managers so that they can manage modern slavery risks in effective ways through implementation of contract management plans and promotion of mandatory training
• Our commercial team will continue to conduct annual assessments for relevant providers of modern slavery risks.
• Our commercial team will continue to collaborate with our directorates when defining their procurement needs. Building in modern slavery prevention measures and relevant social value themes into our specifications, and award criteria, to assess a bidder’s commitment to improving the wellbeing of their workforce, due diligence, sustainability and anti-slavery activity.