Violence prevention framework for Scotland: annual progress report 2023 to 2024

Update on Actions

We are all safe, and feel safe, in our communities

Action 1 – We will fund the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit to lead on work with partners to identify opportunities to ensure that our evening economy remains safe and free from violence.

Update on progress

The SVRU has been working with Police Scotland to better understand violence within the evening economy and to identify the hot spot areas. From this early analysis, the SVRU identified issues with youth violence within the early night-time economy (from 3pm), especially around transport hubs and retail outlets. The SVRU has therefore provided additional guidance and support on preventing violence and early evening disorder within a number of areas including Fife, West Lothian, Edinburgh, Glasgow, South Lanarkshire, North Lanarkshire, Inverness, Dumfries, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire and North Ayrshire.

Following feedback from Police Scotland’s licensing training teams and those working in the night-time economy, the SVRU has updated and delivered its Bystander training to over 70 police officers who will cascade the training to local licensing teams across the country. This updated training provides more examples of situations in which the Bystander approach could be applied within the night-time economy to protect people from dangers such as spiking.

The SVRU has also been working with communities, the police, schools, One Community Scotland, Achieve More Scotland and Sport Scotland, on additional diversionary sport activities. During the year, this has been trialled initially within the Shettleston and Silverburn areas to reduce the risk of young people engaging in violence. The activity is currently engaging with approximately 25-50 young people.

The work of the SVRU has also been complemented by partners like Best Bar None Scotland (BBNS). BBNS works directly with licensed premises through their accreditation scheme to improve safety, reward excellence, raise standards and reduce crime in licensed premises across Scotland. Through BBNS, working relationships between key agencies such as Police Scotland, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and local authorities, are being enhanced.

Over the last year, Police Scotland Youth Volunteer groups across Scotland have highlighted the dangers of underage drinking through the ‘It’ll Cost You’ campaign, delivered in partnership with Police Scotland, the Scottish Alcohol Industry Partnership and Community Alcohol Partnership. This campaign aims to reduce the risk of harm and vulnerability to under 18s by cracking down on proxy purchasing.

Next Steps

• The SVRU will take the learning from their sporting intervention projects in hot spot areas where night-time economy violence has been a problem and scale these up in more areas. This will include the east end of Glasgow, Dundee and parts of Edinburgh.
• The SVRU will locate itself in areas where the data and intelligence suggest that there are particular challenges with violence,
• including in schools, retail locations and neighbourhoods. Early data analysis highlights parts of Glasgow and Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen and Falkirk would benefit from this additional support to assist local partnerships to deal with problems relating to violence. More anecdotal intelligence would also suggest that the SVRU could assist in Fife and West Lothian.
• The SVRU will use data analysis to support Police Scotland in deploying Bystander training where it is most needed to help keep people safe within the night-time economy.
• MAV will continue to train taxi drivers to spot the signs and dangers of domestic abuse, rape or sexual assault so that they are better able to alert authorities.
• PSYV Volunteers groups across Scotland will continue to highlight the dangers of underage drinking through the ‘It’ll Cost You’ Campaign.

Action 2 – The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service will continue to monitor and improve their service engagement processes and procedures to identify and support vulnerable and high risk people in their homes and communities to help keep people safe from harm.

Update on progress

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) continues to deliver Home Fire Safety Visits across the country as well as engaging with communities at various events, at incidents.

Online Domestic Abuse training modules have been published. 237 staff and volunteers have completed the Domestic Abuse Awareness Raising Toolkit and 253 staff and volunteers have completed the SFRS Domestic Abuse module. Enhanced Safeguarding training has been delivered to 421 staff and volunteers since April 2023.

Since April 2023, Fire Safety Support and Education has been delivered to 173 children and young people (aged 12-18) across the country, working in partnership with education, community learning development, social services and others to identify young people who may be on the periphery of offending and require additional support in education or meet a vulnerability criteria.

Messaging is now included within all SFRS fire related anti-social behaviour youth engagement resources. SFRS deliver presentations directly to young people within schools across Scotland, while also promoting the availability of presentations and lesson plans for schools and community groups to use directly.

Over the last year, SFRS have also been supporting and signposting schools and young people to Fearless, the youth branch of Crimestoppers. Fearless have been promoting pro-social behaviour and encouraging young people to seek support and report crime or risky behaviours. Fearless and Crimestoppers also work closely with SFRS and Police on the annual Bonfire Night campaign promoting safety awareness and encouraging communities to report concerns about firework misuse through their dedicated phone and online channels.

Thirteen SFRS Youth Volunteer Schemes (YVS) are established, which creates opportunities for young people to ‘work together for a safer Scotland’ providing experiences of life in a working fire station and opportunities for young people to volunteer in their community. YVS engages a minimum of 25% of young people from a range of vulnerable backgrounds and contributes to both a perceived and real reduction in anti-social behaviour.

Across the 2023/24 period, YVS had 213 Youth Volunteers registered, 52 of whom were reported as being vulnerable and 18 as Care Experienced. 105 adult Volunteer Youth Instructors were engaged, who contributed over 4,000 volunteering hours to YVS across Scotland.

Next Steps

• A process is underway to better support staff in recognising, reporting and recording Adult and Child Protection/Welfare concerns. An area will be chosen to run a pilot in 2024 and rolled out in 2025.

Action 3 – To complement implementation of this Framework, the Scottish Government will work with Police Scotland to support the development of their Violence Prevention Strategy during 2023/2024.

Update on progress

Police Scotland’s Violence Prevention, Licensing Co-ordination Unit has been consulting across the organisation to draft a strategy which aligns to the Outcomes for Policing and the Violence Prevention Framework. The strategy will encapsulate the range of interventions being taken forward by Police Scotland to address a number of specific challenges including serious violence, youth violence and violence in the night-time economy.

Next Steps

• Ongoing engagement and collaboration with the SVRU in development of the strategy. This is expected to be available in 2024/25.
• During the coming months, Police Scotland will continue work with the SVRU, Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) and partners in Public Health Scotland to improve multi-agency data collection and dissemination across Scotland and enhance both the surveillance of violence (and its drivers), and the understanding of effectiveness of interventions.

Our communities are stronger and more resilient

Action 4 – The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit and its partners will use the learning from its place-based pilot in Wallacetown, Ayr through 2023-2024 to develop the approach into further additional areas of Scotland.

Update on progress

Over the last year, Scotland has witnessed several high-profile mass disturbances and organised violence within disparate communities across the country, in specific areas of Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Ayrshire. The SVRU has since worked with partners and communities to build social cohesion to reduce violence and anti-social behaviour.

The SVRU has captured and published the lessons from its pilot place-based approach in Wallacetown, Ayr. During the year, the SVRU has also been supporting a place-based approach in Niddrie and the Hays areas of Edinburgh. The SVRU has held meetings locally with housing providers, the council, police, faith groups and other community organisations to help reduce the risk of violence.

Next Steps

• During 2024/25, the SVRU will establish an Advisory Group, ensuring the voices of those most affected by violence are included in its violence prevention responses. This is in addition to SVRU activity in Niddrie and the Hays areas of Edinburgh and will involve local support organisations. During the course of 2024/25, the SVRU will review the impact and the lessons learned.
• The SVRU has responded to several incidents of serious violence over the last year to reduce the risk of escalation within these communities. During 2024/25, the SVRU will develop a partnership deployment model to help deal with future incidents.

Action 5 – During 2023, the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit will lead work in partnership with YouthLink Scotland, Police Scotland and other partners, to deliver possible solutions specifically aimed at targeting weapon carrying amongst some young people, and older people with histories of violence.

Update on progress

The SVRU initiated research looking at weapons data, which will inform its approach to tackling weapon carrying for 2024-25, working in partnership with MAV and YouthLink Scotland.

The SVRU has initiated a community of practice for over 100 Police School Liaison Officers across Scotland along with training and development to over 800 teachers in schools to provide young people with key messages on violence and knife crime prevention, reaching 19 local authorities across Scotland.

The SVRU has provided additional training to help improve Police Scotland’s stop and search practice, aiding their ability to understand and sensitively address the root causes of violence and weapon carrying. The SVRU has also worked with One Community Scotland, to deliver a project engaging with ten young people to understand their experiences of Stop and Search within Scotland.

YouthLink Scotland delivered various online and face to face NKBL training sessions to 703 practitioners working with young people. In addition, the NKBL programme worked directly with 274 young people. During this period, YouthLink Scotland also developed and launched a new peer education module for upper primary pupils.

MAV worked with young people to highlight the consequences of knife carrying and knife injuries in primary schools, youth clubs and secondary schools, speaking to 3,402 young people over the year.

Next steps

• YouthLink Scotland will continue to develop peer education resources for its upper primary module and explore how the programme can be utilised during the transition from primary to secondary school. YouthLink Scotland will also update its practitioner resources for primary school aged children. These additional resources will be available on the NKBL website and advertised through social media platforms and the NKBL network.
• The SVRU will identify those who are habitually involved with knife related violence and work with them directly. During 2024/25, a new ‘focused deterrence’ approach will be tested out.
• MAV will continue to develop programmes for young people in primary and secondary schools.

Action 6 – The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit will lead work with YouthLink Scotland and with other partners to identify opportunities over the next year to develop a collaborative plan with actions for harm reduction and violence prevention specifically targeting the effects of social media on violence.

Update on progress

The SVRU, in partnership with Youth Link Scotland NKBL and MAV has conducted research on the negative uses of social media. It has developed resources for a ‘Quit Fighting for Likes’ campaign to address the filming and sharing of online violent videos and increasing awareness of the harm such incidents can cause as well as providing information about prevention.

Next steps

• Partner organisations will launch the social media and violence prevention campaign in September 2024. The campaign will be backed with new learning resources to support practitioners working with young people to encourage discussions on these issues.
• The SVRU will review the impact and reach of the campaign.

Action 7 – By August 2023, we will review the findings from our stakeholder engagement with the Scottish Community Safety Network, to consider the next steps for work to prevent and tackle antisocial behaviour.

Update on progress

Widespread engagement was completed by Scottish Government and the Scottish Community Safety Network to examine the problems currently caused by antisocial behaviour in Scotland. A joint report was published in November 2023 – Reviewing Scotland’s Approach to Antisocial Behaviour.^[3]

The Independent Working Group on Antisocial Behaviour has since been commissioned by the Minister for Victims and Community Safety to undertake a review of how the Scottish Government’s approach to preventing and tackling ASB could be improved.^[4]

The Working Group will report its conclusions and recommendations to Scottish Ministers, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA) and Police Scotland by the end of this year and we anticipate the report being published in early 2025.

Next steps

The Scottish Government will act on the recommendations of the independent expert working group on antisocial behaviour.

We participate in healthier and more respectful relationships

Action 8 – We will consider the findings from our forthcoming Behaviour in Schools Research, which is due to be published in late 2023, and will work with partners to develop a response to any emerging issues relating to violence.

Update on progress

The Scottish Government held three relationships and behaviour in schools summits between September and November 2023 and published the research on Behaviour in Scottish Schools^[5] in November 2023, which provided robust national evidence on teacher and school staff experiences of pupil behaviour. Whilst this evidence suggests behaviour in our classrooms and around the school is generally good, it reported increases in most low level disruptive, serious disruptive and other negative behaviours in school.

The SVRU has also:

• worked with South Lanarkshire Council to provide training to over 200 newly qualified teachers on violence prevention and relationship-based practice.
• worked with Police Scotland School Liaison Officers through a day long CPD event for 110 police officers
• established a Campus Officer community of practice to provide in service day training in secondary schools
• delivered presentations on violence and conflict resolution to over 800 teachers in Scotland’s schools.

Over the last year, 210 schools have confirmed delivery of the MVP programme as part of their curriculum. This equates to approximately 6,195 mentors (senior phase pupils) delivering a minimum of 8,400 MVP lessons to younger pupils to explore gender stereotypes, the scope of violence, healthy relationships and respect.

In April 2024, YouthLink Scotland published some qualitative research with girls^[6] to increase understanding of young women’s experiences of and involvement in violence, in order to better support them to reach their full potential.

Next steps

• The SVRU will provide further training and support to Police Scotland’s School Liaison Officers through three further events.
• The Scottish Government will implement its national action plan, jointly owned with COSLA, on Improving relationships and behaviour in schools: 2024–27. The national action plan has been developed in collaboration with the Scottish Advisory Group on Relationships and Behaviour in Schools (SAGRABIS) and was published in August 2024.
• The Behaviour in Scottish Schools Research identified a rise in misogynistic views expressed by male pupils as an emerging pattern of behaviour. Education Scotland is therefore working on a pilot professional learning programme for primary and early learning and childcare staff.
• MAV is redeveloping its school programme with the help of young people and teachers, to keep it relevant and current.
• The SVRU website youth violence research toolkit will be updated to assist practitioners engaging with the prevention of youth violence.

Action 9 – During 2023-2024, the Scottish Government will fund the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit to work with partners to explore further roll out of situational Bystander training to more organisations and communities, to improve the effectiveness of the approach and promote existing resources for wider use across Scotland.

Update on progress

The SVRU has updated and delivered its Bystander training to over 70 police officers who will cascade the training to their local licensing teams. These officers have been responsible providing 223 training sessions across the country reaching an estimated 2,000+ staff working in the evening economy.

The SVRU has also provided input to support delivery of a Police Scotland pilot CARES Programme to around 80 probationer Police Officers at the Police College. This includes negotiation, conflict resolution, relationship-based practice, trauma (trauma impact prevention tools) and wellbeing training content. This is a national first and seeks to upskill officers to reduce the potential for escalation of violence when dealing with individuals in crisis, distress or exhibiting violent behaviour.

Next steps

• YouthLink Scotland is working with young people to update its current Bystander resources and create a new cohesive package. A new workshop will be used alongside its virtual reality game, ‘Nae Danger,’ delivered in secure units and residential units to increase knowledge of being an active bystander.
• SVRU will support all probationer police training from 2024-25.

Action 10 – The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit will deliver a pilot, based on our Suicide Prevention principles of Time, Space and Compassion. This will be in place in 2023 and will help connect people and reduce the risk of harm and violence.

Update on progress

During the year, the SVRU developed a suicide prevention programme which has now been adapted to delivery within Glasgow Clyde College for trainee barbers/hairdressers. Training evaluation was positive, increasing the chances of potentially positive interventions with clients. Glasgow Clyde College has now integrated this into their syllabus.

MAV Navigator and Youth Navigator staff have all undertaken Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) and work to the Suicide Prevention Time Space Compassion principles.

Next steps

• MAV is working with YouthLink Scotland NKBL to produce an educational module on suicide prevention for youth workers.

The Scottish Government’s ongoing commitment and overarching activity to prevent suicide and its harm will continue through the ‘Creating Hope Together’ strategy.^[7]

People at risk of experiencing violence are supported to live healthier, more productive lives

Action 11 – In 2023-2024, we will fund the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit and Medics Against Violence to extend their Navigator-style approaches, to help support more people with multiple complex issues, including problematic drug and alcohol use, to access and engage with appropriate services, to stop the revolving cycle of harm. In partnership between Medics Against Violence and the NHS, this will include further roll out of the Hospital Youth Navigator pilot, to ensure more young people will be able to access the help they need at an earlier stage in their lives.

Update on progress

MAV Hospital Navigators have continued working within eight Emergency Departments across Scotland, providing support to 2,204 people with complex social issues this year alone and over 9,000 in total. Hospital youth Navigators are available in Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Children and have supported 115 young people this year and over 600 in total. MAV now has youth hospital Navigators in the Royal Children’s Hospital in Aberdeen.

Using this youth worker approach, MAV has introduced a pilot Secondary School Navigator in one school as well as a Family Navigator providing practical and financial support to 161 families attending the Royal Hospital for Children to complement the hospital Family Support Service.

During the year, the SVRU, working in partnership with the Scottish community justice organisation SACRO, has secured the recruitment of two Navigators for the Saltcoats Police Custody Centre. This approach supplements and complements the pilot in Fife police custody site and is supported by external funding.

The Braveheart Industries Community Youth Navigators continued to target some of the most vulnerable cases in Glasgow, supporting over 200 people.

Next steps

• MAV will explore the possibility of having a Maternity Navigator in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow to support new mothers in pre-natal clinics and post-natal wards.
• The SVRU will work to test out the use of a Navigator to support those leaving the alcohol and drug courts and children and young person’s court in Glasgow.
• The SVRU will continue to support Navigator-style approaches to enable both the community-based programme You Decide Team and the Police Custody Programme (in North Ayrshire) to develop and become independently funded.

Action 12 – During 2023-2024, Medics Against Violence will lead work, co-ordinating with other partners, to test out delivery of a new model of support for young people based within the community to prevent harm from violence escalating.

Update on progress

MAV placed a School Navigator within a school community in North Lanarkshire to test the use of Navigators within such a setting. This was refined into the On the Edge programme, which was piloted with a group of six young people.

Next steps

• The School Navigator will be based in one school and will work from that base with three school communities in total over 2024/25.

Action 13 – We will fund the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit during 2023-2024, to work with partners to develop an approach to tackle repeat violent victimisation, linking in with the Victims Task Force. This will be informed by the findings from the Scottish Government funded Repeat Violent Victimisation Research, which is being conducted by researchers at the University of Glasgow and is due to be published later this year.

Update on progress

The Scottish Government published the Repeat Violent Victimisation Research^[8] in September 2023. The findings were shared with members of the Victims Taskforce.

In response to this research, the SVRU has established a Violence Anonymous group (currently 10 members) during the year, creating the very first group of its kind in Scotland. The programme will work with individuals with significant problems with violence to help them turn their lives around.

Next steps

• The SVRU will evaluate the Violence Anonymous programme and look to expand it.

Action 14 – During 2023-2024, the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit will lead work to identify opportunities to intervene earlier to reduce and prevent harm by those that have been, or at risk of being, care experienced.

Update on progress

The SVRU has been working with the Promise Team and North Lanarkshire Council specifically to support care experienced individuals living in precarious situations. Four Care Navigators have been recruited to work directly with those who have care experience and provide help with housing and educational issues as well as to access specialist assistance from third sector organisations.

Next steps

• The SVRU will support the evaluation of the programme and will work with the team to develop learning and implementation guides that can be used to help promote and expand the approach if proven to be effective.