West Midlands Violence Prevention Alliance

October 2015 Update

The Alliance launched back in

June 2015 with an event
bringing together partners in
commitment to taking a public
health approach to violence
prevention. This is described
in the Department of Healths
2012
Protecting
People,
Promoting Health report:

Many of the key risk factors that make individuals, families or

communities vulnerable to violence are changeable, including
exposure to adverse experiences in childhood and subsequently
the environments in which individuals live, learn and work
throughout youth, adulthood and older age. Understanding these
factors means we can develop and adopt new public health
based approaches to violence. Such approaches focus on the
primary prevention of violence through reducing risk factors and
promoting protective factors over the life course.

A large part of Alliance work is promoting, influencing and supporting partners in embedding a public
health approach, and implementing interventions with an evidence base, as well as continuing to
contribute to the evidence base through proper research and evaluation see
http://violencepreventionalliance.org/ and follow us on Twitter @WestMidlandsVPA If youre interested
in finding out more about any of the things were doing, or are interested in getting involved, please get
in touch! Rachel@violencepreventionalliance.org
A question for us all is how can I champion preventative work and work with my partners as a
system?

So, what are some of the things weve been up to over the summer?

World Health Organization membership

We attended the annual WHO meeting of
international Violence Prevention Alliances the
7th Milestones of a Global Campaign for
Violence Prevention Meeting. There was a great
deal of interest in the work happening in West
Midlands. This has led to some promising
partnerships, particularly with colleagues at the
Centre for Public Health.

Injury Surveillance System

PHEs national Field Epidemiology Service are
hosting this new work, building an enhanced
Injury Surveillance system in line with the
evidence from the Cardiff Model of analysing
A&E and police data to improve our
understanding of violence and therefore improve
partner responses. The system aims to scale up
over time, looking to test other data sets.
Mentors in Violence Prevention scheme
Well soon be working with a number of schools
to pilot and evaluate locally the highly acclaimed
MVP programme, which is being widely
implemented across Scotland. The approach is
highly engaging, using a bystander approach,
incorporating peer mentorship and encouraging
young people to see themselves as leaders and
active citizens. See http://mvpscotland.org.uk/
for more info

Local Violence Needs Assessments

Were working with police and public health

colleagues in our local authority areas to
produce a violence needs assessment for their
area, building on the regional violence profile
which kick started the Alliance. These will show
us the needs in each area and look at
opportunities to work in partnership.
WMP and ambulance data pilot
Supported by a successful Police Innovation
Fund bid West Midlands Police, alongside
Cambridgeshire Police, Metropolitan Police
Service (London), Cambridge University and the
respective Ambulance Services, are beginning a
pilot project to draw together police and
ambulance data for analysis. The analysis will
test how effectively Ambulance data can be
used to enrich our understanding of violence,
particularly violence seen by the Ambulance
Services which isnt reported to the police or
other services.
Regional Domestic Violence Perpetrator
Programme
Were beginning work with the PCCs office,
community safety partnerships and partners to
scope options for a service specification for a
programme to be commissioned and accessible
across the region.
Other developing work includes working with the
Police & Crime Commissioners Victims
Commission to support them in commissioning
effective services for victims; working with
University Hospital Birmingham Trust on the
development of the VRN (Violence Reduction
Nurse) role and to develop the Trusts
preventative work around violence; and
commissioning action research to improve

WMPs frontline response to violence.