Getting it right
Getting your response to anti-social behaviour (ASB) right requires more than an internal review. It requires an independent, expert voice willing to ask the questions your team might not think to ask, and to challenge practice constructively.
ASB Help’s Critical Friend Service provides exactly that. As an independent charity working closely with victims, practitioners and agencies across England and Wales, we bring a unique, informed perspective to community safety and ASB service reviews – one that is always guided by the real lived experiences of victims.
What we offer: Why choose ASB Help?
Our Critical Friend Service is flexible and tailored to your organisation’s needs. Working alongside you at agreed stages of your review, we provide:
We regularly review and offer critical scrutiny of policy and processes to local authorities, housing providers, and police forces. We sit as independent chairs or panel members for ASB Case Reviews and encourage dynamic multi-agency collaboration. We have also completed ASB Case Review Appeals, offering desktop reviews of the process and ensuring victims have received best practice from application to completion.
We regularly collect data to inform our own work and implement surveys via platforms such as Slido and Microsoft Forms. We work closely with the Office of the Victims’ Commissioner, the APCC, the NPCC, and the Home Office – our 2024 report, “ASB Case Review: Victims’ Voice or Box Ticking Exercise?” has been included in recommendations within both the Victims and Courts Bill and the Crime and Policing Act 2026, and our Practitioner’s Communication Guide has been implemented in Neighbourhood Police Training under the College of Policing.
We convened our own Lived Experience Focus Group in 2023, which continues to grow, bringing together individuals from across the country with a wide range of ASB experiences. We are experienced in communicating with empathy and sensitivity with vulnerable individuals, and in facilitating sessions – from neighbourhood meetings to strategic planning sessions – that draw from real lived experience to inform findings and recommendations.
A significant part of our work, such as our ASB Help PLEDGE, involves reviewing and scrutinising process and policy, producing findings, and making recommendations to support best practice implementation. We conduct peer reviews for agencies in both the public and private sectors, ensuring all recommendations reflect current legislation and compliance requirements.
Through our training and ongoing work with agencies across the sector, we maintain an up-to-date picture of the initiatives and strategies being implemented nationally – and how effective they are. We use this knowledge to benchmark your practice against comparable organisations and share what good practice looks like.
We will meet with a panel of your partners to discuss your current multi-agency approach, identify any gaps or areas for improvement, and support you to strengthen your existing framework. Our relationships with key stakeholders give us an advantageous position to help you build on existing partnership links – and develop new ones.
Our experience
ASB Help is a team of five, with experience spanning every layer of ASB work. Between us we have managed practitioner teams, provided in-depth victim support, prepared case files and attended court, chaired panel and multi-agency meetings, delivered training nationally, produced analytical reports, and completed peer reviews with constructive feedback for other agencies.
Our team backgrounds include policing, housing, local authority, victim support, and communications – a versatile skill set that allows us to consider every aspect of a review through a varied lens.
Unlike larger consultancies that may allocate this work to one or two practitioners, ASB Help undertakes Critical Friend work as a team – assessing each element and determining the most appropriate skill set to lead, while ensuring collaboration across the team throughout. Our independence as a charity, and our privileged position of working closely with victims across England and Wales, means that lived experience always guides our response.
What's included in ASB Help's Critical Friend Service?
Our Critical Friend Service includes:
Independent scrutiny and constructive challenge at agreed stages of your review
Advice on data collection, engagement, and analysis methodologies
Facilitated tenant, victim, colleague, and community engagement sessions
Written feedback and recommendations following each stage
Best practice and benchmarking insights drawn from our national network
Partnership facilitation and multi-agency working support
Free assessment of your ASB Case Review policy and ASB Help PLEDGE sign-up
Complimentary support with an ASB Case Review
Get in touch
If you would like to find out more about our Critical Friend Service or discuss how we could support your organisation’s ASB service review, we would love to hear from you.