THE physical and mental welfare of police officers should be at the forefront of people\u2019s minds, the Police Federation of England and Wales\u2019 Annual Conference has heard.<\/p>\n
Sir Thomas Winsor, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, was applauded when he described as \u201cunacceptable\u201d that the police service has demand pushed onto it from other public services.<\/p>\n
He added that forces must fully understand how the traumatic events that officers deal with every day affect their mental wellbeing \u2013 but said a drive for efficiency should not be at the cost of officers\u2019 mental health.<\/p>\n
Sir Tom (pictured) told delegates: \u201cOfficers also have mental stress and strain that comes with the job from many angles: from the enormous pressure of their workloads and being run ragged, but also from the appalling things they see and hear in their working lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to determine how forces assess the impact of mental health and wellbeing on their officers. Do forces fully and properly understand the knock-on effect on officers\u2019 welfare and wellbeing if they have dealt with a serious road traffic accident or a suicide?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s vital that forces have adequate systems for giving people the support they need. If police forces\u2019 most important asset \u2013 their people \u2013 are under strain then the ability of that force to serve the public is itself compromised.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolicing can and should be made more efficient but it becomes more difficult if officers are impaired either physically or mentally or both.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe police\u2019s cultural strength is also one of its greatest vulnerabilities \u2013 the dedication, the professionalism, the can-do attitude, the never say no attitude.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe failures of other public services push demand onto the police, which is demand that the police shouldn\u2019t deal with. That is just not acceptable. For example, why don\u2019t we have child and adolescent mental health services that work 7 days a week?<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen police can be relied upon to get the job done there is less pressure on leaders to bring about much needed improvement.\u201d<\/p>\n
PFEW Vice-Chair Che Donald said that the service needs to have a conversation with the public about what the service can and cannot do.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cThe public expects officers to deal with issues that have previously been dealt with by others. We need to have dialogue with public about what we can reasonably deliver based on our limited resources.\u201d<\/p>\n
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THE physical and mental welfare of police officers should be at the forefront of people\u2019s minds, the Police Federation of England and Wales\u2019 Annual Conference has heard. Sir Thomas Winsor,\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions\/480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}