Modern slavery transparency statement

This statement sets out the steps the Health Foundation has taken to ensure, as far as it is able to, that there is no modern slavery taking place either as a part of its work or within its chains of supply.

The Foundation welcomes the Modern Slavery Act (2015). It understands that its continued success as a Foundation relies on the trust and confidence that its stakeholders place in it and that this in turn relies on its reputation for acting ethically, with integrity, and to the highest professional standards. As a Foundation we are aware that we need to identify those areas of our business or supply chains where there is a risk that modern slavery might be taking place and that we must have appropriate measures in place to counter this risk.

The organisational structure of the Foundation

This is set out in our annual report and accounts. Our work takes place in the UK or western Europe.

The Foundation’s supply chains

For the purposes of its approach to modern slavery the Foundation categorises its supply chains as follows:

• suppliers providing services requiring low skill levels, of a kind often carried out by non-UK nationals
• suppliers providing utility services
• suppliers providing either academic research (or similar) or specialist technical advice to cohorts of our award-holders to help them with their quality improvement projects.

Responsibility for anti-slavery initiatives

The Director of Finance and Operations is responsible for anti-slavery initiatives.

Relevant policies

The Foundation is in the process of developing an anti-slavery policy. Until this is ready, the area is covered by:

• the Foundation’s whistle-blowing policy
• a range of policies and procedures to ensure compliance with UK employment law
• internal audit reviews of HR
• an Employee Assistance Programme
• our annual staff survey, which encourages staff to pass on feedback. The survey produces a regular action plan for improvements which are then acted upon.

Due diligence of suppliers

The Foundation has adopted a risk-based approach to its work on this to date. It has focused on the first area of the bulleted list in the above section on supply chains ie suppliers providing services requiring low skill levels, of a kind often carried out by non-UK nationals.

Having identified these we have begun with the suppliers that we pay most to for services of these kinds, the largest of which by a considerable margin is our cleaning company. We have investigated the levels of payment made to the individuals who clean our office and ensured that their wages have been increased to London Living Wage levels.

There is a small number of other providers of low skill level services that we still need to assess on this.

Performance indicators

As all of the areas of supply that the Foundation considers to be at potential risk are in provision of goods and services to office management, our performance indicator is currently the proportion of such services that we have investigated and – to our satisfaction – resolved.

Training available to staff

At present, this has comprised ensuring that our facilities staff are aware of the training and information resources on the relevant gov.uk webpage.

This statement was approved by the Foundation’s board of trustees on 12 July 2018.