Violence Reduction Unit secures funding boost

Admin

February 13, 2025
2 min read

Violence Reduction Unit secures funding boost

The mayor’s Violence Reduction Unit has secured £9.4 million investment from the Home Office, allowing it to build on youth work intervention programmes that work to bring violence in the capital down. The new funding will enable the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) to deliver key violence prevention work. This includes embedding teams of skilled and experienced youth workers in hospitals and in police custody, to offer support, guidance and a route away from violence for young people.

It builds on a scheme that has seen over 3,100 young people since 2022 receive support, and contributed significantly towards helping those deemed a high risk to others or to further violence. After engaging with a youth worker, 77% reduced their risk of harm from others and 73% felt safer post-intervention.

The mayor set up the VRU in 2019 as the first of its kind in England and Wales. It will also fund youth workers embedded in police custody suites all over London. The Divert and Engage programmes, which involves youth workers embedded in police custody, are reaching 10,000 young people at a point of crisis with two-thirds achieving positive outcomes in reintegration into education, training or employment.

For those under 18, almost 90% who are arrested for violent offences did not re-offend over the following 12 months after engaging with a youth worker. Youth workers based in hospital and in police custody provide an opportunity to intervene in a young person’s life much earlier. Known as the ‘reachable, teachable moment’ skilled youth workers engage with young people when they arrive at hospital with injuries or after having been arrested – the time when they are most receptive to changing their behaviour.

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