Prioritising Officers’ Mental Health

OFFICERS who have been called out to deal with Coronavirus-related deaths during the pandemic should seek mental health support if they need it.

Around 400 deaths outside of hospital and care settings have been so far recorded in South Yorkshire, meaning officers volunteering for the difficult role of dealing with these deaths have been exposed to the negative ‘drip-effect’.

Extra resources – including the proper PPE kit and training – were given to the officers involved, but South Yorkshire Police Federation says it is essential their ongoing mental health is given just as much care.

Chairman Steve Kent said: “We’ve had a small group of officers who were dedicated to dealing with these incidents.

“It’s obviously never going to be good to deal with because it’s a constant negative drip effect of dealing with such things, but the feedback that I’ve got is that it did work quite well within the force.

“While those officers were involved with this and were given extra PPE and extra training, it helped because other resources in the force didn’t have to be pulled in to help.

“In reality, sudden COVID-19 deaths haven’t, thankfully, been as big an issue as we feared. But it has still been there and reducing that stress on the force overall has been a positive.”

If they need it officers have access to all the usual suite of mental health and welfare programmes provided by the Federation, Steve added.

He said: “We always push this message out as much as possible.

“We’ve got the welfare support programme, and people do approach us, and we do approach teams to see if there are any issues.

“We’re going to see every officer in the force in the coming months.

“While we send out information on emails and literature, we have to rely on officers having the time to read it.

“So it’s a lot better coming from the horse’s mouth, which is one of my intentions.”