Setting up a youth violence prevention project in a London hospital emergency department

What is it about?

This paper talks about the experience of setting up a youth violence intervention project from within a UK hospital and the evaluation which accompanies it. Baseline findings about the events that led to the youths entering the intervention and their psycho-social risks are included. The paper also reports on how the intervention embedded itself into the hospital over time. Finally, there are excerpts from a focus group with a matched sample of youths investigating barriers to service use.

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Why is it important?

The study is important for understanding the importance of intervening in youth violence through the health sector and the barriers which might arise to engaging the target population. This paper introduces an intervention which is relatively novel in the UK and as such offers something to learn from.