Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps (a) he and (b) his Department are taking to promote and implement the accident and emergency-based Cardiff model for violence prevention in England.

The Information Sharing to Tackle Violence (ISTV) programme is a Department of Health-funded cross-government programme informed by the Cardiff Model and designed to reduce knife, gun and all other violent forms of crime. It is a key deliverable for the Government in addressing crime.

Collecting data on serious violent incidents is a requirement on Type 1 accident and emergency (A&E) services. Non-confidential ISTV data is shared with local Community Safety Partnership (CSP) colleagues for use as a basis for crime prevention strategies. High quality information from hospitals can be used by CSPs to tackle all forms of violence through local interventions such as targeted policing or applying licensing restrictions to bars and clubs. The Department published “Information Sharing to Tackle Violence Guidance for Community Safety Partnerships on engaging with the NHS” (2012) which included practical tools and guidance for CSP partners.

The Department secured funding for the Violence Reduction Nurse project which aims to implement the ISTV data standard consistently across hospitals in England. Since 2015 this has covered the costs of 12 Violence Reduction Nurses who alongside their other duties work to set up systems within their own A&E and to support up to 20 more hospitals in their region to adopt the information standard. Public Health England is supporting the standardisation of data collection, including injury data, in Emergency Departments through the Emergency Care Data Set.