TIIG event special: On the 7th March 2024, TIIG hosted their annual event bringing together partners working within injury and violence prevention from across England and Wales.

The event had over 180 attendees with presentations from the Home Office, Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, Bolton Council, Liverpool Council, Northumbria VRU, The University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University.

This newsletter focuses on the presentations from the TIIG event.

Slides and event recording are available here: https://tiig.ljmu.ac.uk/Event2024

Serious Violence Duty: In December 2022, the Home Office published their Serious Violence Duty. Draft guidance for The Duty was announced in response to a government consultation in 2019, to support a multi-agency approach to reduce serious violence. The guidance follows the publication of the Serious Violence Strategy in 2018, which outlined the Government’s commitment to tackling serious violence.

Self harm in Young People: Deliberate self-harm (DSH) is the act of purposefully hurting your body. Looking at a sample of TIIG Emergency Department (ED) data, DSH attendances comprised approximately 3% of all injury attendances between January 2020 and March 2023. Over six in ten (62%) of DSH attendances were women, with pronounced spikes in attendances for young women between the ages of 14 and 19 years.

Dog bite collaboration: Dog related deaths are defined as being where the cause of death for an individual is ‘bitten or struck by a dog’. Whilst dog related deaths are rare and also not thought to be increasing, there is much regional variance. TIIG are working on a bid in conjunction with colleagues at The University of Liverpool which aims to understand why the North-West has a higher incidence of dog bites when compared to the rest of the country.

During August, Liverpool was the focus of national press reporting after we saw four fatalities from gun and knife violence in the city over a weeklong period including a nine year old child and one of our own Environmental Health student alumni. As academic staff working in violence prevention, these four deaths are not only saddening but also disheartening as despite the well evidenced benefits of collecting the data that we do, our work in itself cannot stop tragic incidents occurring. It is by seeing the work of our local partners who are out delivering interventions, devising new strategies, treating patients, and reaching those most at risk that reminds us of all the positive work which takes place and the impact this work is having. We know that this work takes time, but we also know that we have hardworking, caring and passionate people across Liverpool and beyond who are all working to make a difference. These four deaths should serve as a stark reminder and strengthen our efforts in adopting a public health approach to violence, focusing on primary prevention and early intervention to ensure these incidents are not repeated. We are extremely proud to work with so many individuals and organisations who are fighting to tackle violence across England and Wales. Thank you for all the work you do.

TIIG event 2022 special: On the 12th July 2022, TIIG hosted a event inviting partners working across injury and violence prevention to join us for a series of presentations. The event had over 150 attendees from across England and Wales with presentations from each of our partner Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) as well as the North West Coast Clinical Network, NHS England, NHS Digital and LJMU.

This newsletter focuses on some of the main themes from the TIIG event.

LJMU students partner with Merseyside VRP: As part of their Practical Skills module, first year Public and Environmental Health Undergraduate students at Liverpool John Moore University (LJMU) partnered with Merseyside Violence Reduction Partnership (VRP) to provide intelligence and knowledge on key areas as identified by the VRP. Examples of work completed by students included the redesigning of a VRP campaign to make it more suitable for those who are neurodiverse.

TIIG event 2022: The TIIG event is a half day event which normally takes place every year and brings together key partner organisations working to tackle injuries and violence. Whilst the event has been on hold during the Covid-19 pandemic, we are delighted to announce it will be taking place once again. The next TIIG event is scheduled to be held online on the 12th July 2022.
More information will be available shortly on the TIIG event page.

The Emergency Care Dataset (ECDS) is the national dataset for urgent and emergency care, allowing for more consistent and standardised identification of key injury groups (through injury intent fields) as well as supporting the collection of Information Sharing to Tackle Violence (ISTV) data items. The North West team at NHS England and NHS improvement, and NHS Digital Data Liaison Service (DLS) have been working with trusts to improve understanding of ECDS, data collection and quality.
This work led to a collaboration between the NHS teams and TIIG to host two workshops with NHS Trusts to improve ECDS collection, but also provide information to Trusts on why ECDS and ISTV data collection is important. Whilst this data is pivotal in improving patient care and hospital planning, it also supports wider work taking place by Local Authorities, Public Health, Community Safety Partnerships and police to reduce injuries and violence.
Workshop attendees were asked to rate their knowledge of ECDS, and their understanding of its importance at the start and end of the session. Only 38% of attendees felt extremely or very confident in their knowledge of ECDS pre session, with 40% rating that they understood its importance. These figures jumped to 83% (knowledge) and 86% (understanding) post session. Similarly, those who were not very or not all confident pre session dropped from 35% (knowledge) and 31% (understanding) to 0% for both post session.
We are now planning more workshops with NHS England to expand on this work. If you feel this would be useful for your Trust or you would like to know more about ECDS, please email DLS.

Welcome to the first edition of a new Trauma and Injury Intelligence Group (TIIG) newsletter. The last two years have of course been dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The effects of COVID-19 on our local communities and restrictions to our lives will no doubt be felt for many years to come, impacting disproportionately and hardest on the most vulnerable members of our society. For trauma specifically, we are seeing devastating impacts to mental health. Domestic abuse has been termed the epidemic beneath the pandemic, and our blue-light and emergency services have been stretched even more than usual.
However, despite the difficulties of the last two years, there have also been a great deal of positives. One of these is the development of 18 Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) across England and Wales, who are working tirelessly to tackle the root causes of violence and create safer and stronger communities. We are enthused by the work taking place, not only by the VRUs but by all our local partners in reducing injury and violence. We would like to thank you for your work and continued support of TIIG.