Dr Alex Walker, Violence Prevention Outcomes Officer, presented a poster on the evaluation of the NHS Violence Prevention Team (NHS VPT) at the Violence Reduction Units Research and Evaluation Conference on 11 February 2025.
The NHS VPTs work in University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff and Morriston Hospital, Swansea. The VPTs were established in Cardiff in 2019 and Swansea in 2022, to offer advice, support and guidance to patients attending the hospital’s emergency department with assault-related injuries. The VPTs promote movement away from violence by encouraging engagement with support, intervention and wider services.
The VPTs have been a focus of three core evaluations-
- A Service Evaluation of the Delivery and Implementation of a Hospital-Based Violence Prevention Team within the University Hospital of Wales
- South Wales Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Programmes: Implementation and Process Evaluation
- The Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness of a Clinical Violence Prevention Team Based in the Emergency Department – coming soon (available late 2025)
Overall, the evaluations found that the VPTs played an important role in supporting patients who have experienced violence. The evaluations found VPTs improved the ability of the hospital to identify patients who have experienced violence. The South Wales Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Programmes: Implementation and Process Evaluation highlights how 40% of violence-related patients identified by the VPT were not identified by the ED’s patient management system. The VPTs are also able to signpost patients to external agencies who are able to provide support to the patient and reduce risk of further involvement in violence.
The evaluations have recommended that longer term funding for the VPTs is secured. The recommendations also include areas for development such as enhancing collaboration to better support patients, developing engagement with children and young people particularly those involved in school-based violence, conducting bespoke and targeted research on patient populations to understand the experiences and perspectives of the intervention, and workforce modelling to understand the effectiveness of the multi-agency collaboration.