Online training offer: Serious violence, county lines and exploitation 

Introduction

Serious violence, county lines and exploitation is now a common feature of life in local communities across the country. In particular, it is having an impact on housing providers as properties are being appropriated for county lines activity such as cuckooing and drug dealing and a range of exploitation activities. 

Therefore, it is vital that frontline workers and housing managers have a basic working knowledge of how gangs and exploitation networks are operating and can recognise the signs and have clear guidelines on how to respond and report. 

RESOLVE and the Home Office sponsored Violence and Vulnerability Unit (VVU) are partnering up to promote an online training course to ensure that frontline workers have a basic working knowledge of the range of exploitation that is taking place in their communities. 

The course is designed to be competency based and provides basic information about ‘county lines’ and exploitation and asks candidates to test their knowledge against a series of scenarios. The course has an 80% pass mark for certification and candidates are allowed as many attempts as they like, as it is important that they acquire a good degree of knowledge and are able to recognise the potential threats. 

For individuals 

Any individual wishing to complete the course can access it through the VVU online website link https://vvu-online.com/training/login/index.php for a nominal fee of £20 per licence also payable on the website. 

For Organisations 

Many Housing providers may want to purchase licences in bulk for whole staff teams and frontline workers and this can be arranged by contacting the Unit through the website. 

For organisational purchases, there is also a management service which providers meta data on how many licences have been allocated and accessed, how many have completed the course, how many have passed etc. This is particularly useful for demonstrating the degree of competency across the workforce and can be used when providing data for inspection regimes. 

Some agencies have found it useful for the course to be included with other online training as part of basic induction of new staff. 

Web links https://vvu-online.com/contact-us/ 

Advanced Courses 

In addition, RESOLVE and the VVU are considering in-depth courses for management teams who need to know more than basic knowledge. This will be announced in the new year. 

Jacky Ellison – Head of Learning & Devlopment RESOLVE 

John Dunworth – Violence and Vulnerability Unit 

Ian Harris – Violence and Vulnerability Unit