Case studies

Liverpool City Council has run a dropin service for street drinkers over recent summers, providing substance misuse help alongside other support, such as mental health care and housing support.

The London Borough of Hackney has started to run an employment support programme for people under going substance misuse treatment. The six-week programme offers everything from help writing CVs to confidence building sessions. It has had an immediate impact.

Lambeth were particularly keen to test that the assumptions underpinning their strategic response were correct and to understand what learning could be taken to prepare for subsequent lockdowns and easing of restrictions.

The borough identified the need to work with at risk communities to increase reporting for support (voluntary or statutory support) and the need for greater understanding among professionals in supporting FGM victims.

Waltham Forest has made early intervention a priority as part of its Prevent work. One of it’s flagship programmes is ‘Digital Resilience’, an education resource for secondary school children and staff designed to safeguard young people from potentially harmful information or views online.

In 2017 Manchester set out to shift the culture and practice of children’s social care to become more domestic abuse informed and enable practitioners to have greater confidence in challenging the perpetrator and holding them to account.

Following the tragic Manchester Arena terror attack in 2017, at which 22 people lost their lives, Manchester City Council proactively took steps to embed the principles of Martyn’s Law within the existing licensing framework to enhance and promote public safety in places and spaces where licensable activities take place in Manchester.

With official figures estimating that there are at least 13,000 victims of modern slavery in the UK, the issue is a national challenge. Katherine Lloyd, Communications Team Leader (Campaigns and Digital) at Reigate & Banstead Borough Council, explains how the council translated this national picture into a local reality and helped residents to understand that nowhere is immune from the problem.

In September 2020 the Home Office agreed to use the disused Napier Barracks in Folkestone to house asylum seekers who had presented in Kent, often having crossed the Channel in dinghies.