Eight enablers for partnership working for Northumbria’s Violence Reduction Unit 

Partnership working is one of the most effective ways to address complicated challenges. Partnership or whole system approaches have long been used to address complex public health challenges, with great success.

Since 2019, the UK Government has actively encouraged partnership working to address serious violence via Violence Reduction Units (VRUs). VRUs were developed as a mechanism to enable multi-agency, public health informed approaches to tackling serious violence as recommended by the Home Office’s 2018 Serious Violence Strategy. 

VRUs have a deal of autonomy to develop partnerships, governance approaches, activities, interventions, and ways of working. Because of this, they each look and feel a bit different.  

Most were set up in 2019 (a couple followed later) and in the initial stages were given limited time to set up and begin spending. In many ways, this has led to the diversity in approaches, there was limited time to work together or to consult local partners to understand the best ways to work.  

We’ve been working with Northumbria’s VRU since 2022, across a series of evaluation projects, that mainly seek to understand how their interventions lead to impacts, primarily the reduction of serious violence, across the region.  

Our most recent work with them, however, took a different approach. We were asked, in our capacity as an organisation external to the serious violence partnership, to review the effectiveness of the partnership, effectively undertaking a process evaluation to understand how well the partnership is meeting its intended goals, and to develop lessons, highlight challenges, and consider ways to further improve.  

Northumbria VRU, has, despite some teething issues, made incredible progress in developing a multi-partner regional approach to tackling serious violence.  

It’s like a support group for people across 6 Local Authorities to talk together, to promote good models to take back to their own areas… [The VRU] Created the structures to bring people together to understand the need.  
Public sector partner 

 “[The VRU] has definitely added value. If it was to cease, we’d feel the gap. But it can be hard to appreciate as it feels like a part of what we do. Things would very quickly regress and would lose the coordinated approach around the big issues without it.” Public sector partner 

The VRU has become a well-respected and highly valuable part of the North East landscape. It has proven to be a powerful facilitator, connecting organisations, people, ideas, and data to become aligned in tackling evidence-based priorities. It has developed significant evidence and know-how, and has increased capacity across the region to do work to tackle serious violence.  

“The VRU has strong communication, shared goals, and trust between partners. Effective information sharing ensures that everyone has a clear understanding of the risks, resources, and opportunities, allowing for coordinated and timely interventions.” Public sector partner 

Our review identified a set of eight key enablers of Northumbria’s success. We hope sharing these will provide food for thought for other VRUs, and for other organisations working together in partnership to address society’s most complex challenges. 

If you’re interested in learning more about developing successful partnership work, please contact Maddy.Thompson@rocketsciencelab.co.uk  

To find out more about our work with VRUs, please contact Ciaran.McDonald@rocketsciencelab.co.uk