About

This two-year study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, investigates the connections between cognitive impairments, such as mental ill-health, learning disability or memory-loss, and vulnerabilities to exploitation.

The overlap between cognitive impairment and cases of exploitation is often anecdotally acknowledged but poorly evidenced. In this study we use cognitive impairment as a broad term for developmental and acquired impairments, including intellectual disability, dementia, brain injury, autistic spectrum disorders, ADHD, mental health disorders and substance misuse.

By exploitation we mean unfairly manipulating someone for profit or personal gain, including financial, social or political advantage.

Through this research, we aim to shed light on how these issues connect, including potential causative relationships. We are also working with frontline professionals to inform existing policy and practice, and to provide important information and resources for those who may be at risk.

The research will be completed in four stages

  1. Reviewing UK and international literature on the connection between exploitation and cognitive impairment.
  2. Analysing Safeguarding Adults Collection quantitative data on adult safeguarding enquiries made under Section 42 of the Care Action 2014, aiming to illustrate how frequently exploitation appeared as a factor and what proportion of enquiries involved cognitive impairment.
  3. Surveying Adult Safeguarding leads in English Local Authorities, Modern Slavery Single Points of Contact in English police forces, and Chairs of all English Safeguarding Adults Boards to explore what monitoring, training, policy, and practice currently exists.
  4. Conducting interviews with individuals with cognitive impairment who have experienced exploitation, their friends and family members, and frontline professionals who have witnessed exploitation or supported exploited people. The aim is to better understand the personal, social, and cultural factors that can increase the risk of exploitation and identify points when preventative action could have stopped the exploitation.

The study will be carried out by academics from the University of Nottingham and University of Birmingham. The study will also partner with Ann Craft Trust and Human Trafficking Foundation to ensure the research engages with those who have direct experience of living and working with these issues.

For more information about this project contact: alison.gardner@nottingham.ac.uk

The project has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation, but the view expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the Foundation.