Decision details

The Greater Manchester Strategy recognises that the pandemic has disproportionately impacted our people and places, and acknowledges that recovery will be tough. In Greater Manchester, we will make every effort to ensure that all our people are supported to live a good life, through all ages and stages in their lives. This includes a commitment to supporting our children and young people to be good learners, with any necessary family help, education recovery, wrap-around provision and health and wellbeing needs being met.

As outlined within the GM VRU’s Serious Violence Action Plan our ambition to ‘ensure that families and communities that are affected by serious violence are effectively supported through our place-based offer’ (priority 3) recognising the significant impact that violence of any kind can have on the lives of families. In recognition that families can be both an important protective factor and a deterrent. The VRU are committed to promoting the importance of intervening earlier in Greater Manchester so that families can get help when they need it and not just when they hit crisis point. Working in partnership with national and local research institutes and families themselves to get a better understanding of what families that experience violence need so that we can be smarter and more creative about the services we offer to them.

In June 2021, the VRU in partnership with the Innovation Hub held a Primary School Summit, to address growing anecdotal concerns from primary schools in GM that issues of intergenerational violence and knife carrying appeared to be increasingly prevalent and were affecting children at a younger age than had previously been the case. Of those attendees working in schools 83% indicated that behaviour, particularly in respect to violence or threats of violence, had become worse. There was a notable call for parental education in the context of digital education and positive role modelling in their use of technology and digital interactions. It was agreed that interventions that seek to break the inter-generational concerns should include holistic family approaches for strong, consistent parenting.

The development of the VRU’s Community Led Programmes has found that in many areas of Greater Manchester many families struggle to engage with statutory services and will only engage when they hit a crisis point e.g., when certain behaviours have escalated and are now posing a risk. Parents and carers have welcomed the family support offers available in their areas with one parent who was struggling to get support in place at school with the support of a family worker they would never have known who to go to.

A full competitive tender process will be undertaken, supported and moderated by procurement and Information Governance. A further decision notice will be submitted once the successful bidder has been identified.

The service will be contract managed by the Children and Young People’s Principal (Frank Hamill) and will be subject to ongoing evaluation by the GMCA evaluation partner.

The Deputy Mayor agrees to the funding allocation of £750,000 of VRU core funding to develop and deliver a programme strength based, trauma informed, support for parents and carers

This funding will be delivered across periods 2022/2023, 2023/2024, 2024/2025. The contract will commence from contract award until 31 March 2025.

This amount has been agreed by the Serious Violence Governance Board as well as key stakeholders, including GMCA senior leadership and the relevant Home Office departments.