Avon and Somerset Violence Reduction Partnership

Since 2019, the Avon and Somerset Violence Reduction Partnership has reached 18,596 local young people through universal inputs, 9,623 received detached youth work and 3,696 engaged in targeted interventions.

Click on the link below to be taken to the new dedicated Avon and Somerset Violence Reduction Partnership website:

Avon and Somerset Violence Reduction Partnership website

Background

Partners from across Avon and Somerset came together to form a hub and spoke Violence Reduction Partnership (VRP), previously known as the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU). This model enables both a pan Avon and Somerset and local drive.

The VRP operates with a public health approach to violence reduction, focusing on understanding the causes of violence, and the reasons why people get drawn into a life of crime.

The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) is the VRP hub, providing a central coordination function, overseeing all five spokes, coordinating the Home Office grant allocation and ensuring that the Avon and Somerset VRP is collectively meeting the objectives of the public health approach to tackling serious violence. The five local authorities are the spokes, these are broken into the below areas:

Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES)

Bristol

North Somerset

Somerset

South Gloucestershire

Each local authority has a dedicated VRP coordinator and police officers lead by a Sergeant. All Avon and Somerset VRP spokes use a multi-agency partnership approach, these partners include representatives from:

Education
Health
Local Authority
Probation Services
Social Care
Youth Justice

Together these partnerships identify risk and vulnerability; in doing so they work to address the underlying causes of violent crime, deliver bespoke care plans, offer specialist interventions and/or work with the family or education service to ensure diversion is achieved.

Avon and Somerset VRP work collaboratively to keep our children and young people safe.

Reporting concerns

If you a young person who requires specialist support or advice relating to serious violence. Or you have concerns for a family member or friend, please click on the relevant VRP link above for contact information. In an emergency please always call 999.

If you are a young person who has information on a crime that you would like to report 100% anonymously, please go to Fearless.org. The same website can offer non-judgemental information on a specific crime.

If you have information on a crime and would like to report it 100% anonymously, please contact the charity CrimeStoppers on 0800 555 111 or online Crimestoppers-uk.org. They only want to know what you know, not who you are.

The heading statistic is from 2019 – September 2023.