Report on Violence Reduction Units published

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