The Wales Violence Prevention Unit has developed this Wales-specific guidance to support multi-agency partners to complete strategic needs assessments to understand how violence is affecting their communities and to help them develop a violence prevention strategy, as part of the Serious Violence Duty.
The Wales Violence Prevention Unit developed a violence prevention campaign, #SafeToSay, in collaboration with Good Night Out Campaign and with support from Welsh Women’s Aid. The campaign sought to prevent sexual harassment and violence in the night time economy as COVID-19 restrictions eased in Wales.
This evaluation reports on Phase One of the campaign, which was delivered in Cardiff and Swansea between June and July 2021. The evaluation found that overall, the campaign met its four objectives by encouraging prosocial bystander behaviours in response to sexual harassment within the night time economy.
This study, conducted by the Wales Violence Prevention Unit (VPU) and University of Exeter, explores the experiences and behaviours of bystanders to domestic violence and abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This research, delivered by the Wales Violence Prevention Unit with funding from Public Health Wales, highlights how COVID-19 has resulted in many challenges for children and young people, including changes to routine, disruption to education and a reduction in access to support services and social activities. Evidence indicates that these challenges, together with other factors such as home life and existing wellbeing concerns, will likely have increased the risk of exposure to violence and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), particularly among the most vulnerable children and young people.
This report is one of a series of research publications that will enable us to understand and evidence the impact of the E.A.T programme.
This report looks in depth at the experience of police during a national programme of transformation and cultural change. The report consists of interviews with police officers and staff who received the ACE TIME Training. It examines their perspectives on the impact of the training on their knowledge and practice and their attitudes towards the ACE Coordinator service who delivered the training and ongoing support to operational policing.
This report explores the impact of COVID-19 and the associated health protection measures on children and young people through a review of the available literature and analysis of multi-agency data. It captures the inequitable and long-term impact that the pandemic could have on children and young people, and highlights considerations for mitigating these negative consequences.
To support the work of partner agencies in re-opening nightlife safely following the first COVID-19 lockdown, the Wales Violence Prevention Unit conducted rapid research to assess the evidence and emerging global best practice for re-opening nightlife whilst containing COVID-19 and preventing violence. The report includes key examples of how nightlife has re-opened across the world, how measures to reduce risks of COVID-19 may impact on risks of violence, and provides key considerations for opening up nightlife in Wales.
Experts from across the globe have warned of the adverse consequences of COVID-19 lockdown and physical distancing restrictions on violence in the home, with the United Nations describing it as a shadow pandemic. This social innovation narrative explores how a public health approach to violence prevention is implemented in Wales during the COVID-19 pandemic by the multi-agency Wales Violence Prevention Unit.
Prisoners are at increased risk of poor mental health and self-harming behaviours, with suicide being the leading cause of death in custody. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as child maltreatment are strong predictors of poor mental health and wellbeing yet despite high levels of ACEs in offender populations, relatively few studies have explored the relationships between ACEs and prisoners’ mental health and wellbeing.
This strategy has been developed by the Wales Violence Prevention Unit. It is designed as a framework for the prevention of serious youth violence in South Wales. The primary audience is policy makers and professionals working on preventing and responding to serious youth violence. It is designed to empower individuals, communities and organisations to take a public health approach to violence prevention, with the support and leadership of the Violence Prevention Unit.
The pan-Wales Early Action Together (E.A.T.) programme aimed to develop a whole systems response to vulnerability to enable police and multi-agency (MA) partners to recognise signs of vulnerability at the earliest opportunity and to work together to provide access to support beyond statutory services. Key to achieving this was the development and delivery of the Adverse Childhood Experience Trauma Informed Multi-agency Early Action Together (ACE TIME) training programme. The current report evaluated the phase one roll out of the ACE TIME training (from September 2018 to January 2019).
This report provides an assessment of the epidemiology of serious youth violence in the SW police force area. This includes the established and emerging trends in violence, the cohorts most vulnerable to involvement in violence, the risk and protective factors for violence and the impact of violence on health care systems.
Efforts for local violence prevention have used mainly emergency department (ED) data to inform police operations. However, research has shown the effectiveness of health data sharing in violence prevention. This project builds on this evidence and utilises data from Police, the Ambulance Service and EDs from three health boards to provide a holistic representation of violence at a local level so that contributing factors can be identified and used to inform preventative action. This report outlines the set up of a local routine surveillance system to inform violence prevention.
This report is the first in a series of reports that has sought to understand the landscape in policing vulnerability across Wales, which in turn will support the E.A.T programme approach. It outlines the reality of responding to vulnerable individuals for frontline officers, the enablers and blockers in current service delivery and examines the introduction of the Adverse Childhood Experience Trauma-Informed Multi-agency Early Action Together training (ACE TIME training). This report provides the individual, situational and organisational context within which to view post-ACE TIME training findings and provide key recommendations when preparing to deliver a National transformational and cultural change programme within policing.
This report provides a high-level overview of the journey and transition from the localised South Wales Police PIF project to a National Programme of Transformational change. It details the key framework of the E.A.T programme, its aims and objectives, key roles, mechanisms of delivery in the ACE TIME training and evaluation measures used. The findings from a small pilot study are presented, which considers the fidelity of the training package and the evaluation tools developed to measure the impact of the training prior to national roll-out.
Part of a compendium that provides inspirational examples of building resilience at individual, community and system levels.
The structured multi-agency, early intervention approach to vulnerability pilot tested new arrangements between NPTs and the Bridgend County Borough Council (BCBC) Early Help team to enable a more effective, response to vulnerability demand, with a focus on children, young people and their parents/ carers.
The structured multi-agency, early intervention approach to vulnerability pilot tested new arrangements.
The impact that Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) have on children’s development and the consequent outcomes in later life have been widely evidenced. However, building resilience in children can help protect against the effects of trauma and reduce the risks of poor outcomes in adulthood. The ACE-informed whole school approach is a programme that has been developed to introduce and implement trauma-informed practices within schools. This report captures the findings from the independent evaluation of this pilot approach.
To investigate whether sharing and linking routinely collected violence data across health and criminal justice systems can provide a more comprehensive understanding of violence, establish patterns of under-reporting and better inform the development, implementation and evaluation of violence prevention initiatives.