Jimmy Paul on role heading Scottish Violence Reduction Unit

His predecessors have some pedigree and are household names: Niven Rennie, a former chief superintendent; Karyn McCluskey, a forensic psychologist; and John Carnochan, former Detective Chief Superintendent of Strathclyde Police.

"I'm conscious," he says, "we are standing on the shoulders of giants in the SVRU - those who came before me are also deeply impressive."

When Ms McCluskey and Mr Carnochan founded the SVRU in 2005, Glasgow was enduring more than 40 murders a year, giving the city the unenviable title - and an almost unshakeable reputation - as the murder capital of Europe.

At the time, almost 170 street gangs were in operation and knife crime was so high that every six hours in the city, someone suffered a serious facial injury.

Violent crime in Glasgow has plummeted thanks to the unique and progressive public health approach taken by the SVRU, a system now replicated across England and Wales and as far afield as New South Wales, Australia, but it now remains relatively static.

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A new report from the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR) last month showed progress on tackling youth violence in Scotland is slowing as young people struggle to access “safe spaces” such as youth centres post-pandemic.

Professionals, the report said, are lagging behind trends in young people using social media to facilitate violence.

And so Mr Paul takes over the unit at an interesting time, bringing a CV showing a background in health, the economy and looked after children. He's worked, among others, in the NHS and as co-chair of the ground-breaking Independent Care Review.

His skillset reflects a new style of leadership for the SVRU.

"I think the unit will benefit from some fresh energy and perspectives," Mr Paul said.

"My leadership style is a servant leadership style - radical collaboration is so important. It's not a new idea or concept, but we need something different now."

Mr Paul sets out the context against which the SVRU is currently working - recovering from lockdown, the cost of living crisis, social media prompting changes to how young people live and interact - and emphasises again the importance of collaboration.

Scotland's VRU also operates on a more modest budget than most others, making collaboration even more key.

"It's only by working together and pooling our resources at a time where they are more stretched than they've been in recent decades that we can get to the root of those issues and act preventatively," he adds.

He also believes collaboration must come from working closely with people with lived experience - a phrase that has become a buzzword of the third sector over the past few years.

But for the new SVRU unit it is no buzzword.

While Mr Paul is a passionate advocate for the importance of lived experience, he is keen that his own experience of growing up within the care system is not centred.

He grew up in foster care and residential care in London, seeing violence around him and having family members who were in prison for serious acts of violence.

He said: "We need to cede and share power with those who have lived experiences of these issues because it's only by listening to those people that we really know what the issues are.

"Only then will we really be able to direct our efforts in the right way."

With this in mind, Mr Paul intends to set up an advisory board of people with lived experience in order to strategically guide the work of the unit.

He added: "The fact that people will have different views on an advisory board, I think, is a great thing.

"If you can build relationships across people in this capacity, that acts as a foundation to be able to disagree beautifully, to still be friends at the end of the conversation.

"And for me, the advisory group forms part of an ongoing feedback loop, not a one off consultation, but baking in to how we work, some accountability to those with lived experiences."

Recently First Minister Humza Yousaf launched - to mixed reviews - a national discussion on how to shape positive masculinity for boys in Scotland.

The theory is that by giving boys and young men positive role models and a positive sense of self, the root cause of violence against women and girls will be tackled.

Mr Paul is supportive. "However we frame this," he said, "boys need to be part of the solution. We men need some support to understand and learn some of the behaviours that we've been taught that are acceptable or normal."

Earlier this month, the SVRU launched its Think Equal programme, which works to build emotional literacy in children aged three to six.

Already half of all nurseries in Glasgow have signed up to the scheme.

There are also plans afoot to work with school-based police officers - often referred to, not uncontroversially, as "campus cops" - and standardise how they work.

Some people argue that the presence of police in young people's lives should not be normalised and having officers on campus risks criminalising teenagers.

However, the SVRU disagrees.

Mr Paul said: "Done well, campus offices can play their part to ensure a whole school approach, a better experience for children and their families that any issues are addressed quickly, and to build positive relationships with police officers.

"We're looking forward to supporting campus officers across Scotland."

The outcome of the three-year Independent Care Review was The Promise, a report detailing a raft of radical and innovative measures to improve the lives of care experienced young people.

Implementing the root and branch review of the care system was a flagship pledge of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and The Promise received cross-party support.

The Promise came with a pledge of implementation by 2030 but a recent in-depth analysis carried out by the charity Who Cares? Scotland showed progress is slow on key implementation areas.

One of these is in eradicating restraint, a form of violence against young people.

It is in reflecting on the use of restraint in care settings that Mr Paul opens up on his own teenage years.

He said: "Scotland's committed to becoming a restraint free nation, and there's so much you can do.

"Whether it's ensuring staff have all the skills to de-escalate, whether the environment that people are living in feels homely, the quality of relationships that a young person has, feeling heard in all decision-making spaces because we know that so many people in the care and justice systems feel like decisions are made about them, not not with them."

As a teenager, he said, Mr Paul worked hard at school "despite the carnage" going on in his home life but in sixth form he moved from foster care to a residential unit.

There was no washing machine, it was crowded, and the only cooking facilities were a microwave.

But teachers stepped in: one took his clothes home on a Monday and returned them washed and dried on a Tuesday; one brought him home cooked meals; a maths teacher gave extra tuition.

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"When we say all behaviour is communication, the teachers around me accepted that some of my actions were just communication, my own circumstances, and they acted," Mr Pauls says.

"[It was] a time when I was acting up and I think if that escalated, I might have been restrained.

"But actually, feeling listened to, feeling heard, key relationships, feeling supported.

"When we relay that back to Scotland becoming a restraint-free nation, we need to make sure that every child feels listened to, feels heard."

What he is describing is luck - luck in having teachers who were able and willing to step in and fill gaps.

The Promise talks of weaving love into the care system, a difficult theory to introduce into what are, ultimately, professional systems.

Mr Paul believes these systems have to be carefully evaluated to ensure that relationships between children and young people are treated in a mature and empathetic manner.

He said: "I'm really glad that Scotland didn't legislate for love. I don't think it can. That would represent an institutional view of what love is and becomes not be real or authentic.

"But love doesn't choose who it finds.

"And by that I mean a loving relationship might emerge between a residential care worker and a young person in a really healthy kind of nice way, in a way that just was born out of circumstances for those people.

"And that should be celebrated and nurtured as a key relationship.

"An adult who is crazy about you as a young person. It's just so important to to feel that and know that."

Ultimately, Mr Paul said, the aim of the SVRU is to make itself redundant and he is holding conversations with third sector organisations about creating their own obsolescence.

This is part of his self-described "bold vision" for the unit; that, if things go well, it will cease to exist.

"Some charities seek to exist or some entities seek to exist forever, even if that means they're part of the system," he added.

"A big part of radical collaboration is being really bold about your vision for yourself, even if it means driving your own obsolescence.

"And I would love nothing more than the violence reduction unit to not be needed in Scotland because we are such a safe country to live in."