Trauma-Monitoring Systems To Be Mandatory

New trauma-monitoring systems must not be “tokenistic” – they should be the start of a bigger conversation about trauma in policing, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.

In the Home Office’s recent policing white paper, it announced that trauma-monitoring systems will become mandatory across all forces, to ensure the psychological toll caused by exposure to death, abuse and neglect is recorded.

The new tracker seeks to intervene before a psychological breakdown occurs. It functions by scanning the force’s crime recording systems and highlighting “red flag” incidents such as fatal road traffic collisions, child sexual abuse and sudden deaths.

Steve Kent, Chair of South Yorkshire Police Federation, said: “This is long overdue, but we need to make sure that they get to the right people in terms of trauma.

“We’ve heard before about the drip-drip effect of response officers going to incident after incident – dealing with horrific child abuse, murder scenes, then fatal road collisions. So we have to use this tool to record the big events, but also the little events that can have that drip-drip effect.

He added: “It’s important to be able to measure trauma, and to start taking note of it. It can’t just be a tokenistic thing. It has to be the start of a big conversation about trauma in policing.”