The London Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) Trauma-Informed Practice project
The London Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) Trauma-Informed Practice project aims to help create the conditions for a more trauma-informed and ultimately trauma-responsive London.
The project is seeking to build a shared cross-sector understanding and common language of trauma-informed practice, better understand what trauma-informed practice looks like across policing, healthcare, and local authorities in London, helping to elevate case studies and then communicate these insights and ways of working to practitioners and leaders in the city through a visual ‘roadmap’.
The project is split into four phases:
Phase 1: Establishing a definition of being trauma informed for London a scoping phase including evidence review, scoping interviews, setting up Champions Group
Phase 2: Understanding the London landscape through a needs assessment and promising practice workshops;
Phase 3: A suite of contextualised promising practice – Building and sharing case studies of trauma-informed approaches;
Phase 4: A road map to a trauma responsive London; Codesigning and building the interactive roadmap and writing up a final report.
Timelines:
Violence Reduction Unit is expecting to deliver a final report and roadmap in July 2025, with a celebration event planned towards the end of August 2025.
Their ask:
The team are on the cusp of phase 2 of this research project; launching the Trauma-Informed London Survey to identify existing trauma-informed examples from those working in London’s healthcare, local authorities and Metropolitan policing. The knowledge shared in this short survey will help us to better understand the variations in current practices as well as support building a common language and portfolio of best practice that can be shared cross-sector. This will ultimately help London move towards becoming a truly trauma-informed city.
Given your role, your sponsorship and support of this work and your connection to relevant networks within your borough could significantly help encourage responses to the survey, helping us to build a rich and diverse snapshot of trauma-informed practices across London.
They will be asking London Heads of Community Safety, Directors of Children’s Services, Directors of Adult Social Care, Directors of Public Health, Directors of Housing, and London Safeguarding Children Partnership to either compete the survey or cascade to relevant team members who can complete the survey.
Please complete this survey and for your onwards dissemination to relevant contacts and roles within your network.
The survey will take approximately 15 minutes to complete and will be open until 10 January 2025.