Violence and aggression

The Government Health and Safety Lead (GHSL) led a series of forums with social sector agencies on focussing on key scenarios in which this health and safety risk emerges—and how current systems and controls are being used to manage them.

These discussions revealed a strong interest in enhancing preventative strategies and developing innovative detection mechanisms within the sector and more broadly. Agencies expressed particular focus on areas such as service design, technology, and the use of data and insights—including better approaches to information sharing.

You can read more in our Social Sector Safety Forum Report below.

Interested in how agencies can work together to manage shared responsibilities? Check out our Overlapping Duties Framework to learn how overlapping duties can be identified, managed, and monitored across organisations.

Cross-sector definitions

A working group from across a number of agencies helped us to develop this set of definitions for violent and aggressive (V&A) behaviours. These are intended to help us all speak the same language when talking about risks, describing incidents and looking at controls.

One key aspect of these definitions is the distinction between intentional and unintentional behaviours. This is not intended to match the legal definitions or change how instances of V&A are managed within internal and legal processes but is intended as a consideration when thinking about the different agency contexts, for example healthcare, where unintentional V&A is a more common occurrence.