The Home Office has published an evaluation report on the
operation of Violence Reduction Units in the year ending March
2024.
To read the full report, CLICK HERE
Recommendations
Based on the evaluation findings, key recommendations
for VRUs if considered
appropriate and relevant locally include:
-
ensure the most pressing risk and protective factors for
violence (and violence trends and patterns) are made clear
in SNAs, Response
Strategies, and more broadly when engaging partners;
highlighting the most pressing factors and where and how
the VRU can make the
biggest difference could help with partner engagement and
prioritisation of efforts
-
linked to the above, engage with key partners about the risk
and protective factors that are most relevant to them, to
harness and build upon their existing key functions (for
example, by working with health to improve access to mental
health services, or schools to identify those at risk of
exclusion and work with the VRU to prevent this)
-
continue to convene partners, young people and communities to
work in partnership across the ‘whole-system', which includes
facilitating data sharing, developing or strengthening
effective referral pathways, upskilling professionals, and
more generally fostering relationships between key partners –
the latter includes:
-
treating young people and community representatives as
equal (to statutory agencies) partners to help shape the
response to violence
-
working closely with LAs and CSPs to
co-ordinate and operationalise local responses
-
keep working with key partners to share and improve the
quality of key data sources; where there have been
longstanding challenges with the VRU directly accessing
certain data sources (for example, health and education),
consider if the VRU could focus on
ensuring that existing data sharing between partners is
sufficient and being used effectively for violence prevention
– for example, if the police and health partners share data
with each other already, explore whether
the VRU could
review and advise on how data is being used
-
work with delivery partners to ensure that all interventions
have at least a basic ToC and proportionate
monitoring approach in place from the outset (including to
collect baseline data), which will help with articulating how
commissioned interventions align to the most pressing risk
and protective factors for violence locally, and to inform
the evidence base and future commissioning decisions
Recommendations for the Home Office to support VRUs with the above
include:
-
encourage and support VRUs to review
their SNAs and Response
Strategies to make clear the most pressing risk and
protective factors for violence locally and how the
whole-system approach aligns to these; this could be
potentially covered in sustainability plans based on
existing SNAs and the
findings from this programme-level evaluation (rather than an
additional or burdensome output)
-
recognising the commonalities across VRUs around the most
pressing risk and protective factors for violence identified,
consider sharing existing research or guidance, or hosting
cross-VRU learning events,
focused on effective strategies to address each of these
-
emphasise and support the embedding of whole-system
approaches, which should include building on existing
partnerships (for example, CSPs) and process to
ensure they are functioning effectively, as well as new
initiatives where there is a clear gap or need for these –
this should include sharing systems leadership guidance
developed by the evaluation team
-
continue to fund, at a minimum, the whole-systems function
of VRUs to ensure there
is sufficient time to test a long-term approach to violence
reduction; based on similar programmes, such as the Cardiff
Model and Scottish VRU, 10 years
(from VRUs establishment)
provides a reasonable window to capture the longer-term
effects
-
continue to support VRUs with
sustainability planning, for the core function and that of
interventions
-
continue to share resources, like the newly developed
intervention monitoring toolkit, with VRUs to support the
use of ToCs and proportionate monitoring and evaluation