About the training

Practitioners and clinicians are often required to assess risk and to formulate plans to reduce or manage the risk of  violence that a young person may present. For example, violence risk assessment may be crucial to pre-sentence reports for the youth court, community management plans within youth offending teams, or community CAMHS teams, in-patient CAMHS. services managing risk e.g. care homes - the list is endless!

This one-day training event focuses on the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY; Borum et al., 2006) and is designed for professionals with some background training and knowledge of risk assessment, for instance you may be a user of HCR-20v3 or RSVP/SVR-20 or be attending another of our risk courses.

The SAVRY is a violence risk assessment tool that follows the structured professional judgement approach to the assessment and management of violence risk in adolescents/young people aged 12-18. The tool guides the assessor in considering information, identifying risk factors that are present and relevant, formulating risk, generating potential future risk scenarios, and creating appropriate risk management plans.

It is widely accepted in forensic risk assessment that structured professional judgement performs better than clinical judgement alone, and appropriate training is the key to thorough and defensible assessment.

As a guide, the training will cover the following:

• Violence in young people
• Protective factors
• SAVRY
• Administration of tool
• Practice case

The primary aim of the workshop is to ensure that delegates feel confident when assessing clients using the SAVRY and to develop awareness of how risk management plans can be formulated. A certificate will be provided for evidence of attendance at this workshop, which may contribute to your continuing professional development (CPD).

Who should attend this workshop?

This workshop is designed for professionals (or in-training professionals) who may work with young people at risk of violence, or who are likely to do so in the future.

This is likely to include psychologists, psychiatrists, Youth Offending Team Officers/key workers, nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, Police Officers, other types of therapist, and those in professional training in these roles.

If you are unsure if this workshop is appropriate for your profession then please get in touch with us. This workshop is not usually appropriate for academic only students, as this group is not qualified/experienced to use the tool, but please enquire because we accept that circumstances can be unique.

About the trainer

The primary trainer for this event is Dr Ruth Tully. Ruth is a HCPC Registered and BPS Chartered Forensic Psychologist. Ruth is the Clinical Director at Tully Forensic Psychology Ltd and has worked with violent and sexual offenders for over 10 years. She has been assessing the risk of sexual and violent offenders for a number of years both as an individual professional and as part of multi-disciplinary teams. She is passionate about best practice in risk assessment. Ruth is actively involved in the risk assessment, management and treatment of people who pose violence or sexual violence risks both as a practitioner and consultant to services. Ruth has extensive experience working with those at risk violence in prisons, hospitals, and the community. She specialises in working with complex offenders e.g. those with personality disorder, learning disability, multiple paraphilias, and/or mental illness. Ruth regularly provides expert witness evidence in prison, criminal, family, civil, and immigration cases with a focus on forensic risk assessment. Ruth is an experienced trainer, also being an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK), and she has successfully delivered risk assessment training to hundreds of professionals over the last few years both in open and 'in house'/closed formats.