Federation Chair: We must get mental health support right across all areas of policing

30 November 2020

Forces need to do more to protect the mental health of police officers across all roles, Essex Police Federation has said.

Laura Heggie spoke about the toll taken on officers’ wellbeing after witnessing traumatic accidents and crimes.

She said: “Roads policing officers are unfortunate enough to end up at some really gruesome scenes and it’s important for officers and supervisors to be able to recognise when officers have done that and put the processes in place to try and relieve the officers of some of that stress and burden. They need to be given the time and opportunity to be able to talk about it and let go of some of that trauma.

“Sadly however, this is not just a problem for roads policing. I have been to some truly horrific fatal collisions and serious injury collisions. But at the same time I would not wish to work on a team dealing with online or child sexual abuse.

“As police officers, there are so many different areas where we come into contact with some really terrible things, whether they involve children, adults, domestic abuse and so on. We hear about roads officers struggling because they work alone. But then we also have single crewing in lots of aspects of policing. So we can’t really prioritise one area of policing over another. Forces just really need to get it right across the board in relation to officers’ mental health. And this needs to be across their career – as often the longer you have been service, the more you will have witnessed.”