Officers Still Spending Too Long On Mental Health Calls

4 July 2023

Police officers are still spending too many hours in charge of people in crisis, Kent Police Federation has said.

Chair Neil Mennie said progress had been made in collaborative work between the NHS and the force, but added: “We are still spending quite a chunk of our time dealing with mental health related matters and it’s not ideal.”

He was speaking on BBC Radio Kent as new figures revealed a 62% reduction in people being detained under Section 136 thanks to the introduction of a helpline for officers. The phone line, which was set up in 2019, has enabled officers to seek professional advice when dealing with a patient and take them to a health-based places of safety, rather than arresting them under the Mental Health Act.

Neil told The Wake Up Call show: “NHS staff are creaking as well. To put a very simplistic spin on it, I think that it would be nice to have the same level of access to services that perhaps you would receive if you had a physical injury, if you’re in mental health crisis.

“If, for example, someone does need to go to hospital, often officers are stuck at a scene because of the demand that’s on the ambulance service, which means they can’t get the ambulance to location to get the patient to hospital. So that does tend to have a knock-on effect. But it’s clear from our point of view that more investment in access to mental health services is still something that’s required.”

Police officers receive basic training in supporting those in crisis, but they are not mental health professionals, Neil said.

He added: “If you’ve got a dripping tap, you call a plumber. Our members are not specialists in this field. And of course we join the police to deal with crime and all the stuff that police traditionally deal with. That’s what we want to do. We’re always willing to help and we always generally pick the phone up but the training we get is sufficient just to get us some idea of how to deal with these situations.

“People in mental health crisis can be very unwell and have a lot of complexities around that we just don’t understand – including a treatment history which also we won’t have access to and won’t understand. The helpline is useful to cover some of that but we are still spending a little bit too long in this part of the business.

“We’re moving in the right direction, but there is more to be done to free up our coppers to copper – which is what they want to do.”