Fifteen years on: why direct support must be accompanied by wider change

Emily Death, CEO

This is a big week at Sophie Hayes Foundation! 

12-18 October marks Anti-Slavery Week, the annual national focus of commemoration and action on modern slavery. 

16 October is the highlight of the year for me and all of the team at the Foundation as the incredible participants in our Employability Programme graduate. In full caps and gowns, these resilient, powerful women take the next step towards their independent futures. 

This week is particularly important to us in 2026 as it is the 15th anniversary year of the charity’s founding in 2011, when Sophie Hayes, a British woman trafficked into sexual exploitation overseas, established a place where survivors like her would be recognised in a community of support and given the opportunities and skills to rebuild their independent lives. 

For 15 years, Sophie Hayes Foundation has been on a mission, a mission to challenge the assumptions people make about who a ‘typical victim’ of slavery or trafficking may be, what they might look like, where they may be from. From Sophie’s experiences to the survivors we work with every day, we know there is no such thing as a typical victim. Anybody can find themselves in a moment of vulnerability, at risk of having those vulnerabilities manipulated and exploited. 

Whilst that resolve has not changed, a lot has changed in the last 15 years at SHF! Our work has continued to grow, and over the past year, we supported 374 women survivors through our programmes and longer-term support. We have introduced an ever-expanding range of support services and programmes, including on English language, digital skills, financial literacy, and rights at work. Our flagship Employability Programme which started as Day-46, answering the question what happens to survivors after their initial 45 days of statutory support ends, has gone from strength to strength: 97% of programme participants have improved confidence, skills and strengths; 76% of those survivors have gone into employment, further education, volunteering, or continued vocational courses and training. Just this year, an independent evaluation of the Employability Programme by the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham and the Modern Slavery Policy Evidence Centre demonstrated its clear impact in preventing re-exploitation. 

I could write thousands more words on the achievements of the charity, its indefatigable staff, committed volunteers, enthusiastic supporters, steadfast partners, and most of all its brilliant, creative participants. But the reality, as the report also showed, is that in spite of all of this, the structural barriers which prevent survivors from gaining and retaining independence, agency, and freedom from re-exploitation are still too numerous, too significant, too impassable. 

That is why we start the next 15 years resolutely focused on challenging those systemic barriers. Led by our participants, in the form of our Lived Experience Advisory Group, we are taking up a much more active role in advocacy and campaigning, calling out the barriers which prevent survivors from reclaiming their independence, most notably the lack of right to work in the UK they may have as a result of their trafficking status; proposing constructive solutions to policymakers on improved survivor support more focused on long-term outcomes; and building new partnerships with charities, employers, researchers, campaigners, and everyone who can help to break down the barriers still holding survivors back. 

If you are reading this thinking, how can I join your campaign? How can I take up my place as an active advocate against slavery and for survivor independence? Welcome! Sign up for our newsletters here or follow us on social media to hear about our campaigns and simple actions you can take to amplify survivor voices and influence policymakers. Find out more about volunteering here and ways in which you can work alongside survivors to enable them to access opportunities and skills-based support for their future lives. 

Or, if you can, donate to support the next 15 years at Sophie Hayes Foundation. For one more day until 12pm tomorrow, anything you generously donate will be doubled as part of our Big Give Women & Girls week match funding campaign. It costs £1,000 for one woman survivor to complete our year-long, accredited Employability Programme. 

Thank you to everyone who has supported Sophie Hayes Foundation in the past 15 years. 15 years from now, I hope the charity remains a place of support, confidence and connection for survivors. Above all, I hope every woman can access what she needs to live life on her own terms, with freedom, choice and happiness.