Issue - meetings

Officer: Shifa Mustafa

Key decision: yes

The Leader of the Council delegated authority to the Cabinet to make the following decisions.

RESOLVED: To

1.    Adopt the Framework for The Public Health Approach to Violence Reduction in Croydon (“The Framework”), at Appendix 1 of the report;

2.    Agree the themes and key priorities set out in the report and the above referenced Framework; and

3.    Delegate to the Executive Director Place, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Safer Croydon and Communities, authority to develop and agree a comprehensive Delivery Plan in accordance with Appendix 1 of the report through engagement with the existing structures of the Local Strategic Partnership and keep the Delivery Plan under review to ensure ownership of the Public Health Approach to Violence Reduction is embedded across a wider range of organisations, maximising the skills and knowledge of the strategic partnerships. 

The Cabinet Member for Safer Croydon & Communities gave a presentation on the public health approach to addressing violence in Croydon, an approach which recognised that violence was a complex issue and sought to address the root causes through a whole system approach.

The Vulnerable Adolescent Review which was commissioned by the Children Safeguarding Board had been important in Croydon and the key findings of the report helped shape some of the report.

Members were informed that youth violence in Croydon had seen an ongoing reduction of 11% which outperformed the London average. Additionally, substantial reductions in serious youth violence had been experienced and a reduction of 17% of knife crime had also been seen. While the reduction in crime was encouraging, and over the past five years it was the first time Croydon had dropped below the London average, it was recognised that more needed to be done to reduce crime further and for there to be a sustained reduction.

To realise a sustained reduction in crime the ambition was to treat the source of the issue by looking at the root causes and not just addressing the violence itself. In response to the Vulnerable Adolescent Review and the Director of Public Health’s annual report on the first 1,000 days of a person’s life, the council had recognised that trauma in early life could have a lasting impact on a person’s life. As such, a cultural shift was required to design solutions which addressed issues at an early age and young people did not fall off the radar of partnership organisations. To support the embedding of the cultural shift it was recognised that there was need to ensure impact of trauma was understood by all and interventions were targeted.

The priorities of the public health approach were outlined to Members as building an understanding across all organisations regarding the impact of trauma, ensuring hard to reach communities were being approached, supporting young people in the wider community and family, recognising culture, and ensuring a truly collaborative approach among all involved in tackling the issue.

The Cabinet Member informed Members that work was ongoing to ensure the Croydon approach was in line with the approach being developed by the London Violence Reduction Unit to ensure consistency. Whilst the Croydon Unit would not provide a frontline response, it was intended to seek to influence a range of disciplines both in the council and outside organisations to work together to deliver a public health approach to tackling violence.

Lib Peck, Director of the Violence Reduction Unit at MOPAC, informed Members that the London Violence Reduction Unit had been launched by the Mayor in 2018 and there were representatives from across the board working on delivering the initiative.

The Director of the VRU stated that she felt there was great ambition in Croydon to deliver this approach. By adopting the public health approach it was noted that violence was being looked in its context, and by looking at a child’s journey you were moving  ...  view the full minutes text for item 47