Resources

We're concerned that the government's plans to remove a route to temporary permission to stay in the UK could leave trafficking survivors without the security they need to recover and rebuild their lives. As part of the Immigration and Asylum Bill, the government plans to entirely remove the option of granting temporary immigration status to confirmed victims of trafficking and modern slavery to support their recovery. Without this protection, survivors could be left in limbo, fearing detention or removal from the UK and struggling to access the support they need.

We are deeply alarmed and disappointed by the government’s announcement on ‘earned settlement’. It will cause profound and lasting harm to refugees, including survivors of torture, trafficking and other forms of extreme cruelty. The government had an opportunity to change its approach after receiving extensive evidence about the devastating consequences of this policy but instead has doubled down on its approach that will damage the lives and futures of thousands of men, women, families and children, as well as harm wider integration and social cohesion.

Researchers at UCL, in collaboration with the Helen Bamber Foundation, developed and piloted a clinical skills training programme to support lawyers in navigating conversations about trauma. The training consisted of a two-hour session delivered on four occasions, attended by 33 lawyers from six law firms. Interviews and questionnaires explored its feasibility, acceptability and impact on lawyers’ confidence and capacity to promote resilience and self-care.

English National Opera and the Helen Bamber Foundation are partnering for the West End transfer of Du Yun’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Angel’s Bone. The partnership connects the opera’s central themes with the Helen Bamber Foundation’s specialist work supporting survivors of trafficking, torture and extreme cruelty, helping audiences engage with the real-world issues explored on stage.

Drawing on our lived experience of torture, trafficking and other forms of extreme cruelty, we - the Ambassadors for Change - are a committed group of campaigners working to ensure the UK is a welcoming and fair place for people seeking safety. In recent years, we have noticed a shift in how people discuss survivors, particularly those who are in the immigration or asylum systems. The focus has changed from trying to identify, support and protect people, to implying that they are all liars. This rhetoric risks discrediting survivors, discouraging people from coming forward and reinforcing harmful stereotypes.

In this study, researchers at UCL and the Helen Bamber Foundation, conducted interviews with seven adults affected by statelessness. Participants varied in their country of origin, circumstances of statelessness and current UK immigration status. These were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA), which examined how individuals make sense of their experiences in detail.

This study, conducted by academics at Birkbeck, University of London and co-authored by Cornelius Katona (Helen Bamber Foundations’ Honorary Director of Medical and Research) involved semi-structured interviews with six UK-based therapists about their experiences of working with people seeking asylum and refugees, in particular those from Ethiopia or Eritrea. It calls for a rethinking of a therapeutic approach that considers people within the context of the systemic issues they face.

A new briefing from the Helen Bamber Foundation examines how trauma, fear and gaps in the asylum and trafficking systems can affect survivors’ ability to disclose their experiences and why proposed changes to credibility rules risk penalising survivors for the way trauma affects them.

This editorial is a collaboration between Helen Bamber Foundation, Freedom from Torture, leaders with lived-experience, lawyers and academics from King's College London, Northumbria University and Brunel University London. It examines the mental health implications of the legislation and policy changes introduced by the UK Labour government in 2025.

A mother should not have to choose between getting her child to school and providing her family with essentials such as food, medicines and clothing. Yet for families living on asylum support, this is the reality. Asylum support rates are out of touch with people’s lived realities and based on an outdated and inconsistent approach, despite being reviewed each year. The limited routes to additional support are also burdened by bureaucracy and often difficult for people in need to access.

In 2025, the doctors, clinical psychologists, lawyers and caseworkers across the Helen Bamber Foundation Group have stood alongside our clients as they rebuilt their lives with safety, dignity and hope in the UK. Together, we supported 1,705 survivors of trafficking and torture, stateless people and unaccompanied young children fleeing violence and persecution in 2025. Drawing on over 20 years of expertise, we delivered training to statutory agencies including police forces, NHS practitioners and frontline support organisations in our 'Trauma Centre'. Through our strategic partnerships and evidence-led advocacy - and informed by the lived experience of the survivors we support - we continued to drive systemic change.

For many survivors of human trafficking, recovery does not begin when exploitation ends. It begins when they know they are safe. Without secure immigration status, survivors can spend years unable to rebuild their lives. That is why the new Guidance Note published last month by GRETA, the expert body monitoring implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (ECAT), is so important.