FORWARD THINKING
employment, training, alcohol, substance misuse, poverty, and deprivation – all of these drive violence in the county at the moment. “And we know we need to take a community and partnership approach to our trauma-informed practice, yet still focusing on enforcement. “This is a way of changing our culture, our beliefs, our way of life, our values, and the way our society is organised. This isn’t a ‘nice to have’, it’s a ‘must have’, a ‘need to have’, and an underpinning pillar that drives our day-to-day practice and business.” Supt Srivastava said the approach was
based on eight key principles: recognising trauma; avoiding re-traumatisation; building trust; creating empowerment; providing safety; being person-centred; collaborating with others; and offering choice. He described how understanding the relationship between trauma and violence is a journey for Lancashire that will take a “phased
approach” – moving from becoming trauma aware to trauma sensitive and trauma responsive before eventually becoming trauma informed.” He shared Lancashire VRN’s strategic priorities, which include offering leadership and system mobilisation in four priority areas:
• The prevention of serious violence • Enforcement • Cultural transformation and workforce development
• Evidence: date and evaluation
A five-year development plan (2020- 2025) further outlines prevention and enforcement techniques, with the objectives of multi-agency information sharing and building multi-agency data sets, while learning from current workstreams and established practice. Supt Srivastava, who has served as a police officer for more than 27 years, works within Lancashire’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), and is the VRU lead for the Home Office on trauma-informed practice within policing. He has led for the National Police Chiefs’ Council on the Police and Health Consensus since 2017, a role in which he leads on how policing and health or social care partners can improve their work together to address vulnerability demands. In 2018, he was also appointed the
strategic lead for the National Police Wellbeing Service, with responsibility
for developing strategy and operational practice for the wellbeing of serving and retired police officers in England and Wales. Supt Srivastava said the Lancashire VRN contributes to collective aims by harnessing and sharing trauma-informed resources and good practice, supporting the local workforce to see the benefits of the approach, and developing confidence by supporting such practice across Lancashire. But the collaboration and partnership working extends far beyond the county: “We have developed a prevention network where all 43 police forces in England and Wales are in one network, and we talk to each other about trauma-informed practice and public health approaches,” continued Supt Srivastava.
“We understand what the ‘causes of the causes’ are in Lancashire – education, employment, training, alcohol, substance misuse, poverty, and deprivation – all of these drive violence in the county at the moment.”
“I’m really proud to announce that
a special interest group is going to be worked on jointly between Australia and England around trauma-informed policing and trauma-informed criminal justice systems,” he said. “We are also heavily engaged with the Chief Nurse of England and Wales and the Criminal Justice Lead for NHS England around trauma-informed practice and public health approaches and what that means between policing and health.” Dr Goldthorpe concluded the presentation by explaining that taking a research and evaluation approach is vital to implementing some of the principles outlined. “The most insightful evidence came from qualitative research where we spoke to people who had undergone trauma- informed training and were working in trauma-informed ways with clients. “We found the community work was very much context-dependent – it relied on motivated, experienced individuals who had already established interventions in that area. And the trauma-informed approach was almost the icing on the cake. “Data collection systems need to be robust, and the data must be used appropriately, and all of our participants felt that our clients really need to be at the centre of evaluation and be involved in evaluation development, as well as acting as participants and subjects.”
This echoed Supt Srivastava’s previous comments that collating and understanding what trauma-informed data can reveal about individuals, families, areas and the county as a whole is key to the success of the approach, as is training, with almost 4,000 frontline practitioners trained in trauma-informed practice by Lancashire VRN over the past 12 months. “To be truly trauma-informed we know we have to change our cultures, our policies, our processes and procedures,” he added. “It’s the right thing to do for our communities, and there’s also a cost imperative – violence costs the people of Lancashire £347 million a year.” Prof Allum told delegates: “Law enforcement is not the only solution to try and resolve these problems, because violence ultimately undermines social relations and clearly decreases the support for democracy.” Three other
presentations were given during the session, focusing on building effective, resilient and trusted police organisations in Mexico; community engagement and policing programmes in Iraq; and access to justice and human rights training for police in Fiji. A recording of the full session is available on the GLEPHA website.
The link for e-edition is here:
glepha.com/moi-video/#thematic4
This article first appeared on
www.policinginsight.com
PFEW is intently following the developments of this approach. It is positive that steps are being taken pre-emptively to stop people from committing crime in the first instance, but there needs to be further thought leadership and discussion around the support that must be developed for police officers to play a role within this system. A review of the practicalities and planning of this collaborative approach will be the next key step of the process, but as an organisation we are pleased to see the conversation reflect that preventing and reducing violence is not just the responsibility of the police service alone.
15 | POLICE | DECEMBER 2022
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