Humber Violence Prevention Partnership launched

A new partnership to lead the local response to serious violence in the Humber area is starting work today following a successful application for Government funding.

The Humber Violence Prevention Partnership joins 18 other Violence Reduction Units across England and Wales which have been operating since 2019. A total of £3.5m will be provided by the Home Office to develop and operate the partnership over the next three years to identify the causes of violent crime and lead the local response to preventing and reducing violence through targeted interventions.

The partnership will include the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), Humberside Police, the four local Councils, the local NHS Integrated Care Board, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and Youth Offending Teams working closely with young people, community groups and education providers. A board of senior representatives from the partner organisations met for the first time on Tuesday 26^th July to begin setting the strategy for the work ahead. Some of the programmes the partnership will be commissioning in the first year include: 

• Sports programmes and other positive activities to prevent young people from being drawn into crime. 

• Proactive engagement with young people where they gather in groups to signpost them to support and positive activities. 

• Mental health support aimed at children and young people displaying disruptive and risky behaviours, to avoid them escalating. 

• Targeted campaigns to raise public awareness of issues linked to serious violence. 

• Training for delivery partners to ensure their activities are trauma-informed and do not re-traumatise young people who have had previous adverse experiences. 

• Social skills training for children of primary school age to encourage positive behavioural outcomes. 

• Programmes for young people on the verge of entering the criminal justice system who require intensive support to change their harmful behaviours.

Recruitment also starts today for additional Board members to represent educational institutions and the voluntary sector in the partnership’s decision-making.  The VPP is seeking applications from people across the area who would be willing to contribute their skills and experience.  To find out more about the roles, visit www.humbervpp.org.

The partnership will be supported by a core team hosted by the PCC’s office plus a new violence reduction coordinator role based in each of the four local authority areas. It will aim to target resources where they will have the greatest effect in reducing violence in the future, looking at long-term and short-term solutions to prevention.

Police and Crime Commissioner Jonathan Evison said: “This is the start of a long-term project to tackle and prevent violent crime in our communities. The partnership will seek to identify the root causes of violence and adopt an approach to understanding the factors which lead people to commit violence, whether in the home or the community, and work with them to address their behaviour. It is important that we work to prevent violence from occurring at all, so educational programmes will be developed to engage with young people to steer them away from committing violent crime in the first place. I’m looking forward to seeing our first projects being commissioned and starting work in the near future.”