Modern slavery statement

Our organisation

Leonard Cheshire support individuals to live, learn and work as independently as they choose, whatever their ability. Led by people with experience of disability, we are at the heart of local life — opening doors to opportunity, choice and support in communities around the globe.

Recruitment 

We employ around 4,000 staff, most of whom are based in the United Kingdom. Our staff are largely directly employed and are generally not in any category which is seen to be vulnerable to modern slavery in this country.

Through our policies and procedures, we ensure fair and transparent recruitment processes.  We follow safe recruitment practices, ensuring that everyone who is offered employment with us, whether permanent or temporary has appropriate pre-employment checks. This includes appropriate references, right to work and disclosure checks where appropriate.

We also encourage employees and volunteers to ‘speak up’ about any concerns. We have a number of ways for employees to raise whistleblowing concerns, including our external and confidential speak up service. We also have an employee assistance programme, which is available to all our employees, and offers confidential counselling support.

Where we engage an agency worker we will ensure we use only agencies on our preferred supplier list. Each agency on the list has been carefully selected and complies with our terms and conditions and is required to conduct a thorough recruitment process to minimise safeguarding risks.

Our supply base

Leonard Cheshire has a large and complex supply chain with a variety of commercial relationships with third parties. The charity recognises the importance of its role in executing the requirements of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. We continue to work to ensure a zero-tolerance approach to slavery and human trafficking.

Our approach

We continue to work to identify and mitigate the risk of slavery and human trafficking in our supply chain, including:

• A risk assessment is undertaken during each procurement process, this provides assurance that our supply chains comply with LC Modern Slavery policy
• Having in place a company Modern Slavery Policy and eTraining to raise awareness across our staff and volunteers
• All new suppliers are requested to provide a copy of their Modern Slavery policy at the onboarding stage
• Modern Slavery clauses are included in all central supplier Contracts