NPCC mental health pledge a positive step

IT IS a positive step that the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has signed a mental health pledge, but forces need to be more proactive, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.

The ‘Mental Health at Work Commitment’, which outlines a uniform set of standards for supporting the mental health of police officers, was signed at The Royal Foundation’s Emergency Services Mental Health Symposium last month.

The six standards include declaring that mental health is, and will remain, a strategic priority, and encouraging forces to promote an open culture around mental health.

South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent said: “I think police forces are very good at reacting to mental health crises. Credit where it’s due, our force is investing heavily in the occupational health side of things and we’ve got a lot of systems in place to deal with officers who are in that place already. There’s phone APPS, there’s support.

“But we’re too reactive to mental health. We need to look at the root causes of it. Rather than reacting to the broken engines, let’s not break the engines in the first place.

“I welcome this commitment, but we need to see it come out in practice, we need to see what that is going to look like for the officer on the ground.”

Steve said it was good there was now a “benchmark”, so that things could be improved.

But he added: “We really do, fundamentally, have to look at the pressure-cooker environment that we’re in as a first issue, rather than saying, ‘An officer is broken, this is what we can do for them’. It’s too late. You might never get that officer back.”