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.
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 Asylum support rates are out of touch with people’s lived realities and based on an outdated and inconsistent approach, despite being reviewed each year.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.
This study finds that immigration detention has negative mental health consequences across a variety of immigration detention facilities and detainee characteristics. Recommendations based on findings are presented, including eliminating child detention, imposing upper limits to the duration of adult detention, improving mental health screening pre-detention, and providing evidence-based psychological care during detention.
Survivors of human trafficking are victims of serious crime and grave human rights abuses. Yet in the United Kingdom many survivors - particularly non-British nationals - are instead treated as offenders. Rather than receiving protection, they are frequently arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned, detained under immigration powers and excluded from support because of offences that are directly linked to their trafficking and exploitation.
Over the past decade, the UK has introduced new immigration or asylum legislation almost every year. Yet people seeking safety are still left waiting years for final asylum decisions, forced into poverty while they wait, and too often falling through the gaps of a failing system. Survivors of trafficking are too often not identified and denied the support they need to recover and reduce the risk of further exploitation. The Immigration and Asylum Bill does not address these fundamental problems – it worsens them.
The Immigration and Asylum Bill published yesterday will significantly weaken the UK’s response to trafficking and modern slavery. It will deny protection, support and recovery to many survivors. It penalises survivors for their trauma by setting arbitrary deadlines for disclosure of painful experiences. This approach punishes survivors, will embolden traffickers and in doing so enable exploitation to thrive.
Earlier this year, the government launched what it called the 'Family Returns Consultation'. Despite the name, the proposals in the consultation went far beyond family returns. They aimed to strip back support for people seeking asylum; restrict the help that local authorities can give to children and young care leavers; and expand the use of physical force against children during removals. With Asylum Aid, we strongly opposed these proposals.
In a new editorial, Professor Cornelius Katona (Honorary Director of Medical and Research at the Helen Bamber Foundation) and colleagues raise two vital questions: Can a GP have sufficient expertise to give an opinion in the context of post-traumatic stress disorder and specifically on the impact of detention? And, can a doctor working for a charity be independent, objective, and impartial?
Alongside Freedom from Torture (FfT), we have succeeded in our legal challenge to the changes made by the Home Office to its 'Allocation of Asylum Accommodation' policy. These changes, introduced in February 2024, forced survivors of trafficking, torture and other serious forms of violence to share rooms with strangers.
A new research study explores the impact of short-term grants of leave on former unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. Conducted by University College London, Helen Bamber Foundation and Baobab Centre for Young Survivors in Exile, this research is the first to document the lived experience of receiving temporary status in the UK.
