Officers’ Families Need Support Too

20 November 2023

Officers’ families often support them to do their challenging jobs, but they can also take the brunt of the stress, the Chair of Gloucestershire Police Federation has said.

Steve James was talking as the National Police Wellbeing Service, Oscar Kilo, launched a 'Family Life' programme. Oscar Kilo’s research found that three quarters of family members felt concerned about the wellbeing of a loved one who worked in policing, and three in five struggled with balancing the demands of police work and family life.

The Family Life online hub has a range of guides and toolkits related to areas such as mental health, nutrition and financial wellbeing. It also gives support for forces on policies and processes, and there is a children’s book that helps explain why a parent or carer in the police might sometimes miss family meals or bedtime stories.

Steve said: “This is a positive move. Our families are not only, for many of us, the reason why we do this job, but also they’re the ones who enable us to do this job.

“They put up with us working shifts, crawling in exhausted at 7 or 8 in the morning after night shifts, they put up with us not being there for birthdays or Christmas, and they are the ones that officers go home and vent to and try to unload stress.

“But all of that is also stressful for our families: our partners and children. So it’s only right that the support that officers get is extended out to those who support us.”