Response policing has a gradual detrimental effect on officer wellbeing

EXPOSURE to trauma in response policing is like the “drip, drip” of Chinese water torture, Steve Kent, South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair, has said.

Speaking ahead of the Response Policing Wellbeing and Resilience Week in March, Steve said the amount of incidents officers attend can have a detrimental affect on their wellbeing.

Officers need to know how to protect their welfare and build up their personal resilience in such a demanding job, he added.

Steve said: “I’m a response cop through and through. That’s my background before I was South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair. Being in the Federation has, I’m happy to accept, opened my eyes to the other things that other departments do and the perceptions I had as a response cop have been proven wrong in a lot of cases. Each job within the police has its own difficulties.

“But I do think response are almost the forgotten majority in a way because they are going out from incident to incident. You’re going out to five or six incidents every day, on an average day, of which each one of those could be trauma, a serious accident, people being assaulted, a domestic, a mental health episode, going to arrest people…

“The drip, drip effect of that is almost like the differene between Chinese water torture and putting someone in Iraq. Over time it’s going to have the same effect.”

Steve said it was important to highlight the challenges of the role, as society could not cope without response officers.

He added: “For me it’s like GPs in the medical service. It’s the absolute bedrock of policing responses.”

He said it was vital that response officers remember to take some time to talk issues through with colleagues at the station when they are struggling, and that it is okay not to be okay.

He added: “We, quite rightly, have focused stuff in the federation on our detective colleagues and our traffic colleagues for example. But we need to have this as well because they do often feel a bit left out of things. So it is just that little reminder. And at the Federation we will be going out to briefings and sitting with cops and introducing them to the services available.”