A lack of resources and funding, as well as overwork, is fuelling a wellbeing crisis in policing, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
Oscar Kilo is hosting a Wellbeing At Work conference on Wednesday 6 March and South Yorkshire Police officers can attend it on Teams. It runs from 9am to 4pm and will hear from experts on subjects including anxiety, stress and poor sleep.<\/p>\n
South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent said that more had to be done about police officers\u2019 wellbeing, but that it needed to be proactive rather than reactive.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cSouth Yorkshire Police is quite good at putting things in place as a reaction to officers being overworked and stressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Federation has its own counsellors, we\u2019ve got online counsellors in the Group Insurance, and the force has got its own in-person and online counsellors as well. So we can cover most of these angles, but my argument has always been that we need to stop breaking officers in the first place, rather than concentrating on repairing them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that comes down to the resources that we\u2019ve got and the performance pressure that we\u2019re under. HMIC and politicians come out with unrealistic performance expectations which then puts pressure on our officers, all the way down to the PCs working on the streets or the detectives working on the cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re expected to do so much more, with so much less. South Yorkshire Police is still 300 to 400 officers down on where it was prior to 2010, so we\u2019re still running at the red line. We need to cut the bureaucracy. The real way to deal with officer wellbeing is for forces to get proper funding so that pressure is relieved on our frontline.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was also linked to officers working excessive hours, Steve said. He said: \u201cWe\u2019ve got to have a mindset change. We all know the nature of the job is such that officers can sometimes work long days when there\u2019s a major incident, or if they\u2019re dealing with a court file. We get it. But it shouldn\u2019t be the norm, it should be the exception.\u201d<\/p>\n
That balance isn\u2019t being struck in South Yorkshire Police at the moment, Steve said, adding that teams were also under-resourced when student officers were at university.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cOfficers are struggling to get leave because of resourcing, and that is a problem. We are still an understaffed force, and we need to look at how we\u2019re going to address this.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnderstandably, because police wages are so poor, some people do rely on overtime every month to improve their lifestyle or pay for the bills. But we can\u2019t rely on that, because if things change, the officers aren\u2019t going to be getting that income. There has to be a balance, otherwise it\u2019s to the detriment of their personal lives. Officers working 60 or 70 hours a week is not healthy and not sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n