How to Build a Safe Place: a strengths-based, partnership approach to preventing violence 

• In Event: Breaking the Cycle: Youth Violence Prevention, Trauma-Informed Practice and Multi-Agency Strategies

Abstract

How can you build safety? What strategies can you deployed and how can researchers contribute to the safety of a place? Based on an ongoing evaluation of a violence reduction unit in the North-east of England, the causes of youth violence are firmly located in a sense of threat felt by young people. This threat is constituted of precarity and trauma in the home, the neighbourhood, and the night-time economy.

Based on a three-year government-funded project, the local response has been to build safety through a trauma-informed, strengths-based collaboration between young people, services, and researchers. The goal is to develop both the physical, and the felt, sense of safety by identifying and supporting those young people most at risk of experiencing or using violence.  At the halfway point in the project, we report on the successes and obstacles to achieving these outcomes for young people. Focusing on the development of the partnership, success measures and strength-based approach to evaluation, this presentation will provide an assessment of how far the partnership has come and the road still to be travelled.

Authors

• Charlotte Victoria Russell, The University of Hull

• Nicola O'Leary, University of Hull