Safer Devon Partnership

 

Safer Devon is a partnership of public, voluntary and community organisations that work together to make Devon’s communities safer. It provides strategic leadership for community safety work carried out across the county.

Our Partners include Devon’s four local Community Safety Partnerships which cover:

• East and Mid Devon
• Exeter
• North Devon and Torridge
• South Devon and Dartmoor (Teignbridge, South Hams and West Devon)

Safer Devon and its partners are committed to supporting Devon’s communities through preventing and tackling community safety issues which negatively affect local people and communities, such as crime, hidden and visible harm and exploitation.

• Our priorities

  Safer Devon’s current priority is to tackle violence and its causes, with a particular focus on the following:

  • Interpersonal violence
    • within families or intimate partner relationships (Domestic and Sexual Violence and Abuse)
    • within communities (with a specific focus on Serious Violence, including youth violence)

  • Terrorism and Violent Extremism

  Reducing offending and reoffending, tackling Violence Against Women and Girls, embedding trauma-informed approaches and increasing community confidence are cross cutting priorities in relation to the above. You can learn more about our priorities on the Safer Devon website.

  Safer Devon works alongside other strategic partnerships in Devon, including the Devon Safeguarding Children’s Partnership, the Torbay and Devon Safeguarding Adults Partnership, the Devon Health and Wellbeing Board, the One Devon Partnership (Integrated Care System for Devon) and the Peninsula Strategic Violence Prevention Partnership to address issues of mutual concern and maximise opportunities for inter-partnership collaboration. It also works closely with its counterpart Community Safety Partnerships across the Peninsula.

• Further information

  You can find out more about Safer Devon on our website, including:

  • information about the following local community safety issues, and signposting to further information, help and support:
    • sexual violence and domestic violence and abuse
    • alcohol and drug misuse
    • dangerous drug networks and county lines
    • modern slavery and human trafficking
    • radicalisation
    • sexual exploitation
    • online exploitation
    • fraud and cybercrime
    • hate crime
    • suicide prevention
  • contact details for our local Community Safety Partnerships;
  • further information about the Partnership’s priorities, principles and governance;
  • information about our annual Community Safety Strategic Assessments.
  • Information about our response to the Serious Violence Duty.

  Our website also has information about Domestic Homicide Reviews carried out in Devon. Domestic Homicide Reviews are a review of the circumstances in which the death of a person aged 16 or over has, or appears to have, resulted from violence, abuse or neglect by someone to whom they were related or was/had been in an intimate personal relationship, or a member of the same household. The purpose of these reviews is to identify lessons to be learnt from the death.

• Prevent

  Safer Devon coordinates and oversees the local delivery of Prevent within Devon. Prevent is part of the UK’s Counter Terrorism Strategy (2015, updated 2023). The strategy involves agencies working together to safeguard people and communities from the threat of violent extremism and terrorism.

  The Strategy places a statutory duty on specified agencies, including Devon County Council, to have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”. To fulfil this Duty the Council must collaborate with other specified partners to ensure the effective delivery of leadership, partnership working, learning and development and information sharing in relation Prevent.

  In Devon Prevent is delivered in partnership with Safer Communities Torbay and Torbay Council. Organisations involved include the police, prisons, probation, the NHS, child and adult safeguarding services, and education. Our aim is to reduce susceptibility to being radicalised into terrorism and intervene early to support and divert those where risks around susceptibility are greatest. We also work to increase the resilience of communities to engage with and challenge violent extremism.

  Channel is a key part of Prevent. It is a multiagency approach to identifying and providing support to individuals who are susceptible to being drawn into terrorism. Devon County Council is the lead authority for Channel across the county and chairs and coordinates the Devon Channel Panel.

  Our website provides further details about our work to raise awareness of radicalisation, information about why people may be susceptible to radicalisation and signs that may indicate that someone is being radicalised.