Policing is undergoing rapid transformation. As societies face new and more complex challenges, police workloads increasingly focus on managing risks of harm to vulnerable people. At the same time, public debate voicing concerns about police priorities is rising, driven by questions about what the police do and about legitimacy in the face of discriminatory practices. Dramatic increases in complex cases coupled with cuts to public services have resulted in the police frequently acting as 'the service of first resort', at the frontline of responding to urgent social problems such as mental illness, homelessness and exploitation. The presence of such vulnerabilities draw the police into responses alongside other service providers (such as health, social care and housing) often with little clarity of roles, boundaries or shared purpose. Simultaneously, the transformation of data and its use are beginning to reshape how public services operate. They raise new questions about how to work in ethical ways with data to understand and respond to vulnerability. These shifts in police-work are mirrored around the world and pose significant challenges to how policing is undertaken and how the police interact with other public services, as well as how policing affects vulnerable people who come into contact with services. The Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre aims to understand how vulnerabilities shape demand for policing and how partner organisations can prevent future harm and vulnerability through integrated public service partnerships. Rooted in rich local data collection and deep dives into specific problems, the Centre will build a knowledge base with applications and implications across the UK and beyond. It will have significant reach through collaborative work with a range of regional, national and international partners, shaping policy and practice through networks, practitioner exchanges and comparative research, and through training the next generation of scholars to take forward new approaches to vulnerabilities research and co-production with service providers, service receivers and the public. The Centre will be an international focal point for research, policy, practice and public debate. Jointly led by York and Leeds, with expertise from Durham, Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, UCL, Monash and Temple universities and the Police Foundation, and working with a network of 38 partners, it will explore fundamental questions regarding the role police and their partners should play in modern society. While focusing policing effort on the most vulnerable holds promise for a fairer society, targeting specific groups raises questions about who counts as vulnerable and has the potential to stigmatise and increase intervention in the lives of marginalised citizens. At a critical time of change for policing, the Centre will ensure that research, including evidence drawing on public opinion and the voices of vulnerable people, is at the heart of these debates. The Centre will undertake three interconnected strands of research. The first focuses on how vulnerability develops in urban areas, drawing together diverse public sector datasets (police, health, social services and education) to understand interactions between agencies and the potential to prevent vulnerabilities. The second explores how police and partners can best collaborate in response to specific vulnerabilities, including exploitation by County Lines drug networks, online child sexual exploitation, domestic abuse, modern slavery, mental illness and homelessness. The third will combine research into public opinion with a programme to embed research evidence into policy, practice and public debate, creating a new understanding of vulnerability and transforming capability to prevent harm and future vulnerabilities through integrated partnership working, reshaping the future of policing as a public service.

The 2018 Global Slavery Index estimated there were 136,000 victims of modern slavery and human trafficking in UK, and in its 2019 Annual Report on Modern Slavery the UK Government acknowledged that the scale of modern slavery in the UK is increasing. Across the UK, survivors are currently entitled to receive 45-90 days of support via the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), the government-funded system which provides access to specialist support, with support varying between regions and greater flexibility in the duration of support in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Yet in 2018, only 6,993 potential victims were referred to the NRM (including children). Of those, little is known about what happens to the majority of survivors after they reach the 'cliff edge' of support at the end of their time in the NRM, but there is some evidence that survivors are experiencing homelessness and destitution, and are at risk of further exploitation (Nicholson et al, 2019). Even less is known about the outcomes and support interactions of those who decline to enter the NRM, or who exit prematurely. The ongoing journeys and outcomes for these individuals are not routinely monitored by most support organisations or by governmental authorities. Data is not collected on the numbers of suspected victims of modern slavery who choose not to enter the NRM or who exit NRM services prematurely, or their reasons for doing so. Our project will address this knowledge gap. Building on the work previously developed by research team members on place-based responses to exploitation (Birks and Gardner, 2019), and survivor support (Nicholson et al, 2019; Mead, Jordan & Nicholson, 2018; Toft, Nicholson & Cuypers, 2017; Trautrims, Nicholson & Boulghassoul, 2016; Murphy, 2018) this project seeks to gather rich data and provide analysis that delivers original theoretical insights and understandings of survivor support practice. We will be working with survivors to record and share their experiences of recovery and of their encounters with state and third sector services, and we have third sector commitment to facilitate interviews with survivors across the UK to reveal their non-NRM support journeys. We will focus on three distinct cohorts: 1) Potential victims who have chosen not to enter the NRM; 2) those who have consented to enter the NRM but exit NRM support services prematurely; and 3) those who have exited NRM services following the completion of the NRM support period. Via these interviews, and through an additional structured online questionnaire, we will draw out key messages and solutions from survivors' themselves, building an evidence base that will enable the effective development of existing models of front-line service provision. Our research will show what changes are necessary to enable survivors to recover more quickly, and provide them with the stability to co-operate in bringing their exploiters to justice, increase engagement with the NRM, and achieve sustained liberation. Outputs will include: A website which will hold rich new empirical data which can be explored with visual tools; survivor-informed recommendations for local and national policy-makers on service interventions that can help to promote sustainable recovery and reintegration; a closing conference to reach key stakeholders and capitalise on momentum for change; and academic publications on our findings.

'Climate change and slavery: the perfect storm?' - this was the prescient headline of The Guardian (2013) which called for more international conversation on the links between these urgent threats to environmental and human security. This study forwards this call by examining the inter-linkages between climate change, different axes of structural inequality (e.g. gender, age), and vulnerability to trafficking into modern slavery. The project asks who is most at the 'receiving end' of climate change, is most likely to enter into modern slavery, and who has fewer capabilities and resources than others to adapt to climate change in alternative ways? The research is based in Cambodia, the world's second most climate vulnerable country in 2014. This status derives not only from the heightened climate risks its faces in the form of floods and droughts, but also the lack of capacity to adapt and respond. Eighty percent of the population lives in rural areas with limited knowledge, infrastructure and opportunities; and more than 70 percent rely on agriculture that is heavily sensitive to climate change (UNDP 2014). In 2016, Cambodia also recorded the third highest proportion of modern slaves per capita in the world. Under these compelling set of circumstances then, the project focuses on the Cambodian construction industry as a means to examine how climate change facilitates trafficking into modern slavery and ongoing livelihoods within it. UK and Cambodian scholars will undertake challenging research that aims to combine qualitative interviews with construction industry informants and victims of modern slavery working in brick-kilns and construction sites; agro-ecological profiling, a quantitative household survey, and interviews in brick-kiln sender villages; and analysis of longitudinal secondary data (Cambodia Socio-Economic Study 2014). Findings will improve understanding of the 'deadly dance' of environmental destruction and modern slavery.