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Collaborating to end modern slavery: The CIPS Foundation and Unseen

It has been nine months since Unseen’s Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline was granted £60K funding from the CIPS Foundation to enhance Helpline tech infrastructure and improve supply chain intelligence for UK businesses.

Deputy Director of Unseen Justine Carter explains (in this video) the impact of Unseen’s partnership with the CIPS Foundation and highlights the project’s aims to improve data for procurement professionals and ultimately drive behaviour change that reduces worker exploitation across supply chains.  

In the last few months our Helpline and data teams have worked closely with technology professionals to streamline our data model, and improve data capture and management to strengthen reporting and analysis of the Helpline’s intelligence.  

A key milestone has been the rollout of Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), allowing for a more streamlined process of analysing phone calls. Other developments include the upskilling of Unseen’s data and Helpline staff alongside redesigning the data model to be more intuitive, save time and collect better quality data. 

With the complexity of the calls and contacts we receive on the Helpline increasing each year, so does the urgency to address worker exploitation. In 2024 alone, the Business Portal alerted companies to 57 potential cases of exploitation affecting an estimated 190 workers, and the true number of individuals affected is estimated to be significantly more.   

Investing in Unseen’s technological infrastructure to identify trends of exploitation across UK businesses and supply chains means we can prevent further cases of modern slavery. The support of the CIPS Foundation is crucial to futureproofing the vital role of the UK’s Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline and bolstering Unseen’s mission to end slavery. 

If you’d like more information on Unseen’s business portal, please visit our website. If you’re looking to contact a member of our team, please contact [email protected]

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Tackling Modern Slavery Across Supply Chains and Communities

This article first appeared in the London Universities Purchasing Consortium’s, Autumn 2025 edition of Linked Magazine: Modern slavery is one of the world’s fastest-growing crimes, embedded in global and local supply chains. Every organisation has a role to play in eradicating it. Unseen partners with businesses, policymakers and communities to uncover exploitation, support survivors and help build a slavery-free future.

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Justine Currell

As I came to understand more about the issue, including through a visit to an Unseen safehouse, I knew I needed to do more to stop this abuse and exploitation.

For the last five years of my Civil Service career, I was the Modern Slavery Senior Policy Advisor in the Home Office and led on development of the Modern Slavery Act, including the transparency in supply chains provision and business guidance.

I joined Unseen to lead the development of the Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline, and Unseen’s work with businesses. I am regularly called upon to present at national and international conferences and use my experience of working with Ministers to influence other governments internationally to take action to address modern slavery and, in particular, business supply chain issues.

In my spare time I enjoy keeping fit, music, reading and travelling.

Andrew Wallis

What ultimately compelled me to act was a report on how people from Eastern Europe were being trafficked through Bristol airport to the USA. Kate Garbers, who went on to be an Unseen Director, and I wrote to all the city councillors, MPs and the Police Chief Constable challenging them on the issue. The challenge came back to us: this city needs safe housing for trafficked women. And so Unseen began.

But we never wanted Unseen to be just about safe housing. We wanted to end slavery once and for all, and that remains our driving focus.

I chaired the working group for the Centre for Social Justice’s landmark report “It Happens Here: Equipping the United Kingdom to Fight Modern Slavery”. This is now acknowledged as the catalyst behind the UK’s Modern Slavery Act of 2015. It was a great honour to be awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours that year. On the other hand, I’ve also been described as “the loveliest disrupter you could ever hope to meet”.

This job has taken me from building flat-pack furniture for safehouses, to working with businesses to address slavery in supply chains, to delivering training, raising awareness and advising governments around the world.

When not at work, I enjoy travelling, spending time with my dog Harley, cooking, supporting Liverpool and Yorkshire CC, music (I’m a former DJ) and endurance events such as the Three Peaks Challenge and Tribe Freedom Runs – which I vow never to do again. Until the next time.