Police investigators must take appropriate steps to ensure they care for their mental health

POLICE investigators may not realise they are stressed until it’s too late, which is why they must ensure they must take steps to care for their mental health, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.

Steve Kent, Federation Chair, described a situation where detectives are facing caseloads of up to 50 crimes, which can lead to “unbelievable stress levels.”

Steve said while frontline officers may be dealing with trauma as a result of their work, investigators are facing different challenges.

He said: “It’s a slow drip-drip effect of stress. They are dealing with workloads of complex cases and have the responsibility of making sure that the serious crime investigations are dealt with properly. It’s almost, rather than the trauma side of it which tends to be experienced by response officers, there is more of that long, slow burning problem, especially within our investigation departments.”

Steve welcomed Oscar Kilo’s new solution; an investigators toolkit which hold a wealth of information on how detectives can protect their mental wellbeing.

He said: “There definitely needs to be an awareness of the different stresses and strains investigators face, because having 30, 40, 50 serious crimes on your queue can cause unbelievable levels of stress. So this is really vital work.

“We want to see a culture and a requirement that every officer, regardless of role, regardless of whether they’re driving traffic cars,  are public order officers, or CID, they need to have a regular one-to-one chat, whether that be every 6 months or even yearly, so that they can identify any problems. Most officers don’t realise that they’re stressed until it’s too late.”

To find out more about the toolkit, go to: https://oscarkilo.org.uk/wellbeing-toolkit-for-investigators-launches/