About us
The Violence Reduction Unit was set up by the Mayor in 2019 and works in partnership with people and organisations in order to understand the complex causes of violence and prevent it from happening.
Our mission
We believe violence is preventable and not inevitable.
London’s Violence Reduction Unit is focused on stopping violence before it happens through an approach that is rooted in prevention and early intervention.
Research, data and intelligence to better understand why violence occurs.
We are committed to exposing the underlying causes of violence such as poverty, deprivation, inequality and lack of opportunity.
We are determined to take action to prevent it now and in the long-term.
The VRU champions and promotes the voice of young people, and we listen to local people and work alongside communities to push for greater investment to deliver local change.
We are a team of specialists who use our expertise to work in partnership with communities, councils, the NHS, public health, the police, schools and colleges and charities, to co-ordinate efforts and bring about change.
We believe in the importance of education and being in school, and we’re invested in providing support and positive opportunities for young people.
The support youth workers give a young person can be life-changing. We’re committed to boosting mentoring and the vital youth services in our city.
We recognise the crucial role that parents and carers play in supporting children and young people, and we are testing new ways of working with families affected by violence by investing in ongoing support and training for parents and carers.
Our strategy
Our new refreshed strategy to 2025 has been co-produced with our impressive Young People’s Action Group.
It draws on our learning and evaluation since we were established and tells a story about our approach to tackling violence and how we work with partners to deliver policies and practice, around prevention and early intervention, backed up by research and evaluation.
It demonstrates how we work closely with young people, parents, youth practitioners, teachers, health professionals and the police to champion families, youth work and inclusive education.
This strategy sets out how in partnership we can continue to make the case for prevention and why that's crucial and the only way to tackle the underlying causes of violence.
London's Violence Reduction Unit - Our strategy to 2025
Our priorities
We measure the outcomes of our investment and support in prevention and early intervention across five Priority Areas. We use insight, evidence and gather intelligence about what works and what doesn't by working with and alongside communities. This will ensure our support and our investment works to tackle structural barriers to inequality and that all young people have access to the opportunities they deserve.
These are:
How we'll support the prevention of violence and exploitation of children and young people, and disadvantage, particularly race and sex.
We'll expand access to positive opportunities and provide development into employment, training, apprenticeships and further education.
Focus on developing stronger and more resilient families to better support young people.
Promoting healthy relationships and inclusive practices to reduce exclusions and disengagement with education.
Providing communities with the support and resources to deliver sustainable reductions in violence.
Our partners
Preventing and reducing violence is a collective effort.
No single public service, agency, charity, voluntary organisation or politician can bring down violence alone. To be successful in our goal, we must work together.
The Partnership Reference Group oversees the work of the Violence Reduction Unit and includes key public sector leaders alongside community representatives.
Professionals working with children and young people are often the most likely to identify when someone’s at risk of violence and exploitation.
Falls in school attendance, exclusion, neglect, child exploitation are just some of the signs that something is going very wrong for a young person. Teachers, teaching assistants and education support workers can be the first to spot these signs.
They are also able to provide the stability and support needed where adverse childhood experiences are impacting on a pupil, especially in circumstances where children and young people are not getting this support at home.
Our partnerships with education providers include:
- training and resources for mainstream schools to prevent exclusions
- mentoring schemes to support children in pupil referral units (PRUs)
- taking on secondees to build and distribute our evidence base on ‘what works’ for children in alternative provision education settings.
NHS London has prioritised its role in the prevention of violence with the appointment of a Violence Reduction lead.
NHS London’s programmes focus on developing new models of care, including:
- mental health: developing a psychological model of care in the community for those at risk/impacted by violence
- mental health trauma services: Better integrating mental health into major trauma clinical pathways and major incident responses
- in-hospital: defining best practice standards for in-hospital violence reduction services that are currently embedded within A&E departments
- social prescribing: defining a specialised social prescribing pathway to support vulnerable youth in the community, through community health professionals (GPs, dentists, pharmacists) working with specialist link workers.
NHS London leadership and practitioners are represented on the Partnership Reference Group, contributing to our strategy and sharing their insights, expertise and learnings on violence prevention. This work provides direction to the various programmes we work on with other partners, as well as to advocate and champion preventative violence reduction approaches across all NHS London services.
We work closely with the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). Where the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime oversees the work of the MPS and works on an enforcement, the Violence Reduction Unit is focused on prevention, following what we call a ‘public health approach’ to violence reduction.
Working with the Met, our work involves:
- coordination between the Metropolitan Police Service and the other partners we are working with
- providing funding and grants to diversion and prevention projects and programmes that supports the Metropolitan Police Service
- having Metropolitan Police Service staff embedded within the Violence Reduction Unit to provide invaluable knowledge, understanding and insights.
Currently, the Violence Reduction Unit has the full-time support of a serving Chief Inspector who is responsible for embedding violence reduction work with colleagues in the Met. The Chief Inspector is:
- helping to recruit and train 12 VRU local police champions
- creating a network of officers and staff to capture and share operational learnings for the prevention of violent crime within the communities in which they work
- connecting our work with the work of established and successful programmes and organisations working on prevention work across London.
When the Violence Reduction Unit was created, we knew that we could only succeed in our goal of preventing violence and making Londoners feel safer if we worked with organisations and networks already working to this end. This is especially the case for the 32 Community Safety Partnerships across London’s 32 Councils.
Here our role has been to identify where prevention work is being done well and provide support for greater consistency of prevention across all of London.
Variations between London Boroughs have existed regarding the link between violence and vulnerability. Our partnership allows for greater collaboration. For example, each borough produces a violence reduction plan. We assess these plans and hold peer-to-peer sessions.
The work we do with Community Safety Partnerships and individual London Boroughs strengthens our partnerships with organisations and service providers ‘on the ground’.
We work closely with charities and grass-roots organisations. Our charity network consists of experienced voluntary and community support organisations in London working on issues relating to supporting young people, youth work, safeguarding and gender based violence.
We have prioritised listening and working with grassroots organisations, which are often community-led. They have the trust of their local communities, alongside extensive local knowledge gained from working on the frontline for years. Their insights and intelligence have enabled us to better respond to local needs.