Communicating with Victims of Modern Slavery

The first challenge when considering how to approach communicating with someone who may be a victim of modern slavery is actually being able to identify victims/survivors. The skills needed to support an individual pre disclosure, during disclosure and after disclosure should be carefully considered as insensitivity, dismissiveness or lack of empathy could cause unrecoverable damage to the relationship between a healthcare professional and their patient. Conversely, being overly supportive or excessively friendly can result in blurring of boundaries, which could be confusing for an individual trying to recover from abuse.