An introduction from the VRU Director, Stan Gilmour.
Strategic Needs Assessment
Each year the Violence Reduction Unit is tasked with creating a Strategic Needs Assessment (SNA). The SNA is designed to pull together evidence and insight to support those tackling violence across the Thames Valley.
This year we are pleased to launch our SNA, which takes a different form to those produced in previous years. Across a number of articles we will provide an introduction to the SNA process, a dive into our data on serious violence, and comments on what comes next, including setting our strategic research objectives for 2022/23.
Introduction
Find out more about what our SNA is, why we wrote it, and why this year it looks a little different.
Why this year’s SNA looks a little different.
What do we mean by serious violence?
Data
Read more about what the data says about serious violence across the Thames Valley, and how we can work together to reduce it.
Serious violence fell across the Thames Valley for the third year running in 2021 despite loosening of restrictions put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, analysis by the Data and Targeting Team in the VRU has shown.
Serious violence across the Thames Valley cost the local economy over £125 million in 2021, according to research by the Thames Valley Violence Reduction Unit.
We look at the data available to help us understand who is at risk of serious violence, and how we can better identify them.
We take a look at the trends in homicide across the Thames Valley using previously unreleased data covering the last decade.
A look at how we’ve used innovative techniques to tackle persistent hotspots of violence across the force.
What’s next?
Now you know what’s happening to serious violence, read about what our plans are for the year ahead, including where we will be focussing our data and research work.
Thames Valley Together is our combined data project which will change the way we share and use data across the Thames Valley.
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Our research priorities for 2022/23 will inform our engagement with academic partners, and ensure we work to produce research that can directly inform our work to reduce violence across the Thames Valley.
Let us know what you think about this years SNA, and what else you’d like to see us produce analysis on throughout the year!
Footnotes
This year’s SNA was written by Owen Miller, with support from Nick Portnell, Tori Olphin, Tim Lowe, and Lewis Prescott-Mayling.
Last year’s SNA is available to read here: SNA-V1.1.pdf (tvvru.co.uk)