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Preventing forced marriage

Typically affecting young women, forced marriage is now recognised as modern slavery. Since 2023, the age of consent for marriage has been raised to 18 in England and Wales, and a new law made it a crime to do anything to pressure or coerce people between the ages of 16 and 18 to marry. While front line workers such as teachers and social workers are well placed to identify those affected, they are often not well equipped to identify people who may be at risk.

With support from the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), Dr Rowland Seymour, Assistant Professor in Mathematics, co-led a project with Professor Carrie Bradbury-Jones, Professor of Gender Based Violence and Health, and Dr , Associate Professor in Political Theory at University of Nottingham, . Together they worked in collaboration with Nottinghamshire Safeguarding Children Partnership and developed training materials to help local authorities address risks.

Improving data on human rights abuses

Using statistical modelling, Rowland has developed comparative judgement methods that offer locally-relevant knowledge to map human rights abuses to improve data or fill data gaps on human rights abuses, such as modern slavery and ending child and early marriage.

How can mathematical models help tackle modern slavery?

UK Research and Innovation

Transcript

I think statistics really can help change people's lives and make a difference, inform people's practice. That's really what I care about, is using statistics to inform people's practice. My name’s Roland Seymour. I'm a computational statistician at the University Â鶹¾«Ñ¡, and my Future Leaders Fellowship is about computational statistics to tackle modern slavery.

So as a computational statistician, what I do a lot is work with large datasets, often where the data is partially observed, missing, noisy and develop computer algorithms to analyse the data and best understand how we can better use that data to estimate the prevalence of modern slavery, so how many victims there are, and where victims of modern slavery are located, and how this can then help policymakers make laws about modern slavery and protect victims.

Modern slavery covers a huge range of issues. So where I live in Birmingham, a big issue is county lines drug smuggling. Usually children are forced to go out into rural towns and villages to sell drugs, but it might be people working in warehouses or farms having to work long hours against their will where they're not paid very much. Or it might be happening online, where people pay for online child sex abuse material.

I think the best part about computational statistics is reasoning with data. People really rely at the moment on quantitative reasoning to back up their arguments. So people in the civil service and in government and in the charity sector, they really want to understand what's going on.

And that's why computational statistics can help. It helps them reason with the picture in front of them. They're often dealing with things that are happening on the front line. They may be safeguarding women who have been trafficked or a police may be going in, raiding farms where people are forced to pick fruit against their will. And they're collecting all this information and data, and the computational statistics really helps them understand what's going on and how they can do their job better.

So the long term aim is to tackle modern slavery. The result of this, I would like to be fewer victims of modern slavery, people feeling safe and secure in the work they do. And I'm trying to think about how can I best use my statistics skills to make their job easier. And then to also help the people who are at risk of becoming victims of modern slavery or who are currently victims of modern slavery. What can I do to help them live free and happy lives?

  • Rowland Seymour points at a chalkboard in discussion with two other researchers

    Comparative judgement methods in practice

    To do this, frontline safeguarding professionals are shown pairs of wards in the county and asked which has a higher rate of forced marriage. It is often easier to compare wards than estimate the risk in a single ward. Rowland has previously used these methods to estimate deprivation in Tanzania to predict risk for women’s health and rights. The results are published in Annals of Applied Statistics. 

, identifying areas of the county where the risk is high. Rowland recruited 12 experts in forced marriage from across the county and collected over 1,800 responses from the Nottinghamshire Modern Slavery Partnership. In response to feedback on how to share findings back with those who work in the front line of local authorities and interact with many people from across different communities every day, the team developed a continuing professional development (CPD) course.  

Training for frontline safeguarding professionals to address risks

Informed by the findings, Rowland and the team worked in collaboration with the local authority to design the training around a set of key questions to help identify, understand and address forced marriage. Over 130 local authority workers across Nottinghamshire participated in the training, including those working in Nottingham’s targeted family support group and as part of the County Council’s training for those working with children.

Rowland developed the training to directly address feedback from local MPs, councillors and local authority working groups when he shared the research findings. The team worked to understand frontline workers needs and the training materials have been developed to work alongside existing CPD for frontline workers.

The for social workers or other professionals who have a responsibility to safeguard vulnerable children, young people, and adults at risk of forced marriage.

Through the training we have been able to increase knowledge among frontline staff about the law on modern slavery and forced marriage, as well the differences between forced and arranged marriages. Crucially, staff are also more confident about what they should do when someone is at risk.

Dr Rowland Seymour stands smiling inside the Aston Webb building
Dr Rowland Seymour
Assistant Professor in Mathematics

Impact in action

The resources created are for local authority decision makers and front-line staff, as well as other service providers to improve safeguarding policies and training. The materials have been developed in a train-the-trainer format, so that the training can continue without the need for Rowland and the team to be present.

The research has helped our vision to ensure services for children and families in Nottinghamshire support parents and carers to provide the best possible care for their children.

Trish Jordan
Nottinghamshire Safeguarding Children Partnership Training Coordinator, Nottinghamshire County Council.

The timing of the research, and interest from Nottinghamshire County Council to improve training on forced marriage, coincided with the changes to the law on forced marriage in February 2023. Since the conclusion of the project, the UN Secretary General has , which highlights the importance of subnational data collection.

Rowland and the team are now providing insight to the UK Home Office on understanding forced marriage nationally, with the work cited in several Select Committee reports and shared in the House of Lords. With support from a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, Rowland is looking at how to scale-up the work nationally. Since securing the fellowship, Rowland has attended a police data science day to talk about his work and explain how universities and police could work together to prevent forced marriage.