Analytical Capability

VKPP recognises the vital role that data and analysis plays in understanding policing’s response to vulnerability. Two specific actions within the National Vulnerability Action Plan (NVAP) focusses on these linked areas of police business.

The VKPP Analysis Team strives to work in partnership with key stakeholders to both support existing work and to collaborate with analytical professionals to understand where improvements can be made.

This work is critical to other aspects of VKPP business, including our work to support the embedding of local child safeguarding arrangements. Police and partners aim to ensure intelligence-led threat assessments are embedded in the local child safeguarding system. VKPP is already involved in work with partner agencies to utilise multi-agency datasets to improve understanding of the indicators of serious violence.

Analytical Capability Workstream

VKPP’s Analytical Capability workstream encapsulates a range of activity designed to support continued improvements in the use of vulnerability-focused analytical resources in policing. Priorities for this workstream were established from a VKPP assessment of current practice and gaps nationally.

For details on the Workstream Design

As well as enabling the sharing of key learning through NVAP related activity, Regional Learning Events and providing analytical support to other core VKPP activity, the team works very closely with a number of other nationally focused working groups and projects to support the development of new approaches. 

The team’s current focus includes projects relating to the development of a bespoke vulnerability data quality dashboard for policing and developing potential solutions to increase the standardisation of evidence-informed violence/vulnerability indicators for national use.

Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Analyst Network

Child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) remains a significant threat across England and Wales. Since 2015, a national analyst, supported by a team of analysts based in the Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs), have worked together to improve law enforcement’s understanding of the scale and nature of CSAE.

Having previously worked alongside regional child sexual exploitation (CSE) coordinators, the analyst network continues to work closely with The Children’s Society Prevention Programme and is now part of the VKPP’s broader work to address vulnerability. Our new partnership allows collaboration between the regional analyst network and our bespoke analytical capability workstream.

The CSAE analyst network currently deliver several products aimed at supporting the national conversation on how to tackle CSAE with the most up-to-date and accurate data and analysis from policing. The products include a quarterly report on the totality of police recorded CSAE crime and regular input to the NPCC’s Online Child Abuse Activist Groups working group.