Long-term,
Consistent Support

"You need a professional person who knows your personal background, a person you can count on, who is there for you when you need them. This helps to keep you safe and believing that you can move forward, because you have support for your life after trafficking. "

Support services should be advocated for at the right time and available when they are required in accordance with each survivor’s individual circumstances. It is important that survivors can access support that is long-term (e.g., therapeutic care and individual support s specifically tailored to each person’s assessed needs, risks, and circumstances). Assessment of needs and risks should be revisited and updated on a regular basis and services available for as long as is required. A key outcome feature is that support is consistent and it enables survivors to build a trusting relationship with professionals. It is important that support staff have training and pastoral supervision so that they do not suffer professional burnout and can continue to provide the long-term consistent support that is needed.

Survivor account on how vital it is to have long term and consistent support.

Peter Peter explains the complex journey towards recovery and healing after trafficking

I can work on myself, I can actualise that place where I want to be without having a lot of things, but I need people supporting me throughout the journey. For me it is the acceptance from the society, acceptance from services, acceptance of freedom that I need as a survivor.

I don’t need everything at one go, I just need little steps as I walk through and have people walking through with me and being there for reassurance; just to push or encourage me rather than bringing me down, putting me down and portraying me like I am not anyone, or I’m useless and all of that. If I am not in the best state of mind, of my health, of myself, all these things I’ve been yearning for, become useless, they become nothing.

I can give an example of living with a scar – trafficking is a scar that made me bleed; I can see it and I can feel the pain. but now I am not bleeding. If I see the scar, do I want to go deeper into it or is it for me to find myself, to take myself out of it, which is not easy. It may be a big scar in my day to day life, so it is hard to move forward without touching it. Positivity can only cover what has happened before, it doesn’t mean the scar is not there. It could be opened up again, bleed again. You have to be with it, because it is part of you.

Some days you feel terrible, just want to shout: it is not easy to just forget, the people who made you be where you are, the people who made you lose your personhood, lose yourself – especially if you are without support. Long term support means that whenever you have these hiccups you can do something about it, do something constructive, positive. If a survivor is empowered with support, they will know how to deal with that situation; they will know their worth.