Rapid Response Team
The Rapid Response Team (RRT) engage with young people and young adults with a wide range of needs and who are disengaged from universal services.
The RRT aim to reduce opportunities of people becoming victims and or perpetrators of violence, vulnerability and or exploitation, such as:
- Violent crimes - knife crimes, gang associated violence and exploitation within drug lines
- Violence against women and girls - repeat victimisation and or exploitation
- Community resilience - against hate crimes and exploitation by extremists.
What do the Rapid Response Team do?
- Responsive deployments - the RRT provide fast time response to critical incidents to deescalate community and youth tensions. The team members are deployed as a reassuring presence in the immediate aftermath of a serious or critical incidents and police operations. The team deliver on street community reassurance, identifying any further risks, gathering and sharing community concerns with authorities as appropriate.
- Information gathering and sharing - the RRT work closely with the Tower Hamlets Exploitation Team, Children’s Social Care, Police and contribute to operational panels. The RRT deployments compliment safety planning in children’s safeguarding through community based outreach and interventions. The RRT promote specialist support services and refer people to these as appropriate to individual needs. Specialist partners are able to utilise RRT service delivery and established relationships via Mobile Units to engage with people who are may not access services in other settings.
- Reducing community tensions - the RRT contribute to the work of the borough Tension Monitoring Group, working to reduce emerging community tensions by operating short term street based deployments in community based settings, based on community and police intelligence eg; far right demonstrations.
- RRT mobile units - these accommodate medium to long term tailored group work sessions in accordance with identified risk and individual needs. The RRT ensure younger resident’s views are heard by professionals to inform working practices. The RRT encourage critical thinking skills to counter grooming including online and social media grooming.
- Educational settings - the RRT working in partnership with DWP, Education, Schools, PRU’s and Colleges and housing providers to develop needs led collaborative approaches and actions plans to reduce risk around violence and exploitation.
- Community weapon sweeps - the RRT work with Police colleagues on community weapon sweeps – targeted in neighbourhood hot spot locations identified by the Safer Neighbourhood Police Teams. These are popular and have been very beneficial in allowing for a dialogue with communities and engaging young people in activity to keep their neighbourhood safe.
