Modern Day Slavery 2017-2018

Essex Cares Ltd (ECL) was established in 2009 as a Local Authority Trading Company (LATC) wholly owned by Essex County Council (ECC). ECL is a trusted provider working with Local Authorities and health partners to deliver services aimed at wellbeing and maximising independence.

ECL is committed to providing efficient, effective, and high quality service to all customers whilst also ensuring these services represent value for money. Support is provided to vulnerable adults in a range of community and home based services across Essex and West Sussex.

This statement is made pursuant to Section 54, Part 6 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and sets out the steps ECL has taken to ensure that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place in our supply chains or in any part of our business.

ECL is committed to ensuring that there is no modern slavery or human trafficking within our supply chains or in any part of our business. We have a zero tolerance for modern slavery and human trafficking. Any identified concern regarding to modern slavery and human tracking would be escalated as part of our company’s safeguarding process working in conjunction with other local authority agencies.

ECL has a series of policies and processes to prevent modern slavery and human trafficking, which include:

• Pre-employment checks as defined within both regulated services such as Care Quality Commission and best practice. (This includes checking employees UK address, right to work in the UK and suitable references and any gaps in employment.)
• Policies and systems to encourage the reporting of any concern and the protection of whistle blowers.
• Dedicated guidance on modern day slavery for our workforce to access.
• A dedicated Safeguarding Lead for the company.
• A Safeguarding Adults Policy, which identifies and defines Modern Slavery and how the company will react and deal with any identified safeguard concern.
• Mandatory Safeguarding training (Level 1) provided to all ECL employees annually regardless of role within the company, which includes modern slavery.
• Within our procurement process we have clause(s) included in all of our tender documentation to ensure our suppliers are compliant with the Act.

Signed 18 July 2018