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<p>Since 2019, the Government has invested over £160m in 20 Violence Reduction Unit’s
(VRUs) in England and Wales. VRUs are expected to deliver a ‘whole system’, public
health approach to tackling violence, bringing together key partners to identify the
local drivers and root-causes of serious violence and implementing a multi-agency
response to them. VRUs are supported to adhere to the six key pillars of the public
health approach to reduce violence, as set out by Public Health England (now OHID).</p><p>The
Youth Endowment Fund was established in 2019, which will invest £200m over 10 years
to identify, and build an evidence base around, what works in diverting children and
young people away from involvement in serious violence and making this information
accessible to practitioners.</p><p>The Serious Violence Duty introduced through the
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 (PCSC 2022), requires a range of specified
authorities, such as, the police, local government, youth offending teams, health,
and probation services, to work together to prevent and reduce serious violence within
their local communities, enabled by new powers to share data and information. Specified
authorities are encouraged to take a public health approach in executing their responsibilities
under the Act. The PCSC Act does not define serious violence for the purposes of the
Duty but makes clear that local areas may also consider domestic abuse and sexual
offences as part of their strategies, particularly where preventative activity is
directed at risk factors which are shared between these crimes and public space youth
violence.</p><p>The Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy (published
July 2021) and Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan (published March 2022) contain over 100
cross government commitments and take a whole system approach to tackling these crimes.
Commitments in these strategies cover all victims, including men and boys.</p><p>In
2021, we published the Rape Review Action Plan and set out a series of commitments
to deliver cross-system improvements in the criminal justice response to rape. The
National Operating Model, developed through Operation Soteria, provides policing with
new training and tools to build strong cases and understand patterns of sexual offending,
and seeks to support officers to building stronger cases, understand sexual offending
behaviour and ultimately identify and disrupt offenders at the earliest opportunity.</p>
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