On Wednesday, 18 December 2019, the South Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit held a celebration event for the successful recipients of the violence reduction fund.
Held at the Rotherham United New York Stadium, representatives from the successful organisations and community groups presented to an audience of approximately 80 delegates on how they will use the funding to prevent and reduce violence.
The successful organisations and community groups delivered a three-minute presentation, describing their work and explaining how their initiative would support one or more of the below key elements of the violence reduction unit’s strategy to reduce violence: :
- Primary prevention – stopping violence before it begins,
- Secondary prevention – halting the progression of violence as early as possible and
- Tertiary prevention – providing a way out for people with established violent behaviour.
- Criminal Justice and Enforcement
- Attitudinal Change
Head of the Violence Reduction Unit, Temporary Superintendent Lee Berry said: “The violence reduction unit has funded 25 initiatives to work on preventing and reducing violence in South Yorkshire. The fund was heavily oversubscribed with 96 applications, so we were only able to fund a selection of initiatives across the county. It was clear from all of the applications that there are some excellent ideas in South Yorkshire.
“Today’s event is aimed at bringing together the successful groups, offering the opportunity to understand each other’s work, share best practice and work together. We have included time within the agenda for them to network.
“This is just the start of the process of mapping out and understanding the excellent work currently going on across South Yorkshire. We wish that we had been able to offer funding to everybody. We would like to encourage anyone in South Yorkshire working to prevent violence to make contact and keep in touch with us.”
Community groups from Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield have all been successful with some covering the whole of South Yorkshire.
The funding, between £5,000 and £20,000 is aimed to help reduce the number of people at risk of being drawn into violence or to draw people away from violence.