Trauma Monitoring To Become Mandatory

18 May 2026

Trauma monitoring is “vital” in police forces to help identify officers who may be vulnerable to mental harm, the Chair of Norfolk Police Federation has said.

The Home Office’s recent policing white paper announced that trauma-monitoring systems will become mandatory across all forces, to ensure the psychological toll caused by exposure to death, abuse and neglect is recorded.

The new tracker seeks to intervene before a psychological breakdown occurs. It functions by scanning the force’s crime recording systems and highlighting “red flag” incidents such as fatal road traffic collisions, child sexual abuse and sudden deaths.

Norfolk Police Federation Chair Andy Symonds said he was pleased that trauma trackers were becoming mandatory, and that he had been working with Norfolk Constabulary for a while to get one launched in his force.

Andy said: “This piece of work is vital so that we can much more easily identify the risk factors that cause officers emotional and mental harm.

“The tracker will give supervisors real-time data that will prompt them to sit down with officers over a cuppa to debrief the incidents they’ve been to, and then they can refer officers to more formal support.”

He added that policing was so demanding that officers were attending traumatic incident after traumatic incident, but that it often took its toll: “We know that it can have consequences. My colleagues are human beings who want to protect people, and they just happen to wear a uniform. They are not immune to struggling mentally when trying to process trauma.”

He said: “We know officers are subjected to between 400-600 traumatic incidents during their career, which is significantly higher than the general population, who typically experience three to four in their lifetime. This is why it's vital that we have this extra tool to identify officers who may be vulnerable to mental harm as a result of the tremendously difficult job they do.”