Making every interaction count: Why our new policing guidance comes at a pivotal moment 

A stop. An arrest. A safeguarding referral. A knock on the door after a report of exploitation. These are everyday moments for policing, but they can be turning points for a child. Done well, they’re a chance to spot a risk and connect a child with the right support. But right now, that chance isn’t always taken and opportunities to protect children from harm can be missed. 

We’ve recently published practice guidance – Policing, Children and Violence – setting out six evidence-based recommendations for senior police leaders across England and Wales. It draws on the best available global evidence on policing, alongside new YEF-commissioned research, our annual survey of over 11,000 teenagers, and two years of work with an Expert Panel and Strategic Advisory Group of serving officers and staff, academics and policing bodies. 

But what’s really struck me, working on this over the last year, is the timing. This guidance is landing right in the middle of the biggest shake-up of policing in generations, and that changes what it can do. 

A system being rewired 

In January, the Government published its Police Reform White Paper, From Local to National: A New Model for Policing. It proposes reducing the current 43 forces in England and Wales to a smaller number of larger ones, creating a National Police Service to hold shared standards and specialist capability, and restoring national targets and minimum standards that forces must meet. An independent review of force structures is under way and due to report this summer. 

Separately, devolution is reshaping who sits around the table on community safety. Police and Crime Commissioners are set to be phased out by 2028, with local policing oversight passing to Local Policing Boards under mayors and strategic authorities.  

Put simply: the people and structures our guidance is written for, such as senior force leaders, PCCs, Mayoral Offices, Violence Reduction Partnerships, are themselves in the middle of being redesigned. 

Why that’s an opportunity… 

Our research kept surfacing the same problem: practice for children varies hugely depending on which officer, team or force they encounter. As one officer told our researchers, the same child can be seen three different ways depending on which part of the system picks up their case. That inconsistency is exactly the problem national reform is trying to solve on a much bigger canvas – shifting from a patchwork of 43 different local approaches to shared national standards, deliverable at scale. 

That gives us a real opportunity. Reform of this size happens rarely, and decisions about what “minimum standards” and force-wide consistency means for children are still being worked out. We already have ready-made answers to the “what does good look like” question that a national standards framework will need to ask. Our eight principles of child-centred policing, our call for every force to publish a safeguarding standard for children, and our recommendation to scrutinise stop and search and out-of-court resolutions for disproportionality all set out what good practice for children involves. 

The same applies to resourcing. The White Paper’s ambition to cut duplication and reinvest savings into frontline policing aligns with our second theme: focus resources on what works. Nearly four in five police professionals told us limited resources are a barrier to using evidence-based practice, yet only 44% of senior leaders believe violence prevention decisions in their force are informed by the best available evidence.

Problem-oriented policing reduces violent crime by an average of 24%; hot spots policing by 14%; restorative justice by 34%; focused deterrence by 33%. Meanwhile, popular but unevaluated approaches – knife crime education, surrender schemes, media campaigns, police in schools – continue to absorb time and money without evidence they work. The police can’t do everything with limited resources. That means being prepared to stop doing things where the evidence isn’t there, and focus time and money on approaches where it is. 

And as oversight of policing moves toward mayors and strategic authorities, our guidance gives those new structures a practical, evidence-based place to start. 

What’s next 

As the force structures review reports this summer and devolved oversight arrangements take shape, we want evidence-based practice for children built into that process from the start.  

Through our partnership with the Society of Evidence Based Policing, we’ll be at the National Evidence-Based Policing Conference in Milton Keynes next week, running a series of sessions on violence prevention, child centred policing and violence against women and girls alongside senior leaders from across the sector. And through our Whole Area Model and Youth Justice Partnership work, we’re continuing to support police force areas and youth justice services to test and embed the changes this guidance calls for on diversion.  

If you’re a police leader, PCC, mayoral office or Serious Violence Reduction Partnership thinking about how best to improve response to violence involving children, we’d like to hear from you. 

Contact us: change.yef@youthendowmentfund.org.uk