Trauma

In March 2019 the Lord President, Lord Carloway, commissioned an independent judicial review to improve the management of sexual offences cases. One of the aims of this review was - To improve the experience of complainers within the Scottish Court system without compromising the rights of the accused.

Recommendations recognised the importance of staff across organisations working with victims and witnesses having a shared understanding of the impact of trauma and having the knowledge and skills to minimise the risk of harm and re-traumatisation, to support recovery and maximise participation to gain best evidence.

In May 2023 NHS Education Scotland (NES) in partnership with Scottish Government, published the Trauma Informed Justice Framework which identifies all Police Officers should be trained to “Trauma Skilled” level with Detective Officers requiring the advanced level of “Trauma Enhanced”.

Police Scotland is committed to ensuring we are a Trauma Informed organisation with work ongoing to comply with measures outlined within the framework to ensure our officers and staff have the required skills and capabilities.

A Trauma Skilled programme was developed by NES featuring modules designed to increase understanding of psychological trauma, how to support recovery and develop trauma informed relationships. In November 2024 two further modules were release by NES Trauma Informed Justice modules 1 & 2; Foundation knowledge for working with victims and witnesses and Developing skills for working with victims and witnesses.

These modules are a pre-requisite for officers attending SOLO courses and will be rolled out to all police officers to ensure our workforce reach Trauma Skilled level.

To establish a programme to upskill officers to Trauma Enhanced level a Short Life Working Group (SLWG) was established in November 2023. Their remit was to establish what additional training would be required for SOLO’s, SIO’s across the country and how this could be delivered.

Trauma Enhanced training must be delivered by a Clinical Psychologist therefore the SLWG has been working with Dr Caroline Bruce who led on developing the framework to develop a pilot. This will initially be rolled out to 25-30 students before being refined based on feedback from subject matter experts and expanded to an in person 100-150 student course which will meet the demand of providing training for a substantial number of specialist officers whilst also ensuring learning and understanding throughout. Police Scotland have now employed a Trauma Informed Coordinator who will look at the needs of specialist officers and how this can be factored into the national training program.

This ongoing work will provide officers and supervisors with the necessary skills to ensure they are meeting the aims of the framework to improve the experience of victims throughout the justice system process whilst also supporting our workforce and limiting the impact of trauma.