Please check with your local force to confirm what trauma support is available as this differs from force to force.

Police Care UK provides some comprehensive advice and guidance for help and self-support after a traumatic incident. Read more here.

Police Trauma Events Checklist (PTEC)

Trauma exposure is an often-frequent part of everyday policing in the UK and has been for many years. It is recognised as posing a significant threat to wellbeing as its impact can be dramatic and long-lasting on police officers and police staff - in other words leaving many with some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This can go on to affect an individual’s ability to carry out their job effectively and can have a significant impact on their personal lives too.

To aid combat trauma and measure an individual's exposure to different types and severities of trauma, Police Care UK developed, in partnership with the University of Cambridge, a comprehensive checklist to describe and record experiences of everyday trauma. The checklist, or Police Traumatic Events Checklist (PTEC), is now a vital tool in police officer wellbeing and the PFEW encourages all forces who are yet to take up its use to do so as a priority. 

Leading several trials across different forces and ensuring responsible peer review in 2021, Police Care UK made PTEC freely available to all forces across the UK in September 2023.

PTEC has been developed in such a way that it can be used by individual officers, supervisors, team leaders, Occupational Health Practitioners, wellbeing leads, TRiM practitioners, federation or staff association representatives, counsellors and therapists, and even in force control rooms to monitor exposure levels with officers and staff and manage risk. This is a world first and with sufficient uptake can really impact decisions made around work for the better. Only by recording trauma in a specific and uniform way can its impact be understood, and actions taken accordingly.

Police Care UK has provided comprehensive documentation on the use of PTEC:

• Background reading: Trauma Resilience in UK Policing

GUIDES

• A Guide for Force Systems
• A Guide for individuals 
• A Guide for Wellbeing Leads
• A Guide for Leaders
• A Guide for Supervisors
• A Guide for Trauma Triage
• A Guide for Recruitment