Report Summary
This report provides members of the Policing Performance Committee with an overview of Mental Health Governance & Demand.
The purpose of this briefing paper is to provide a progress update in respect of the work PPCW Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Department in conjunction with Demand and Productivity Unit have carried out to create a Mental Health Dashboard.
To access the full document please open the PDF document above.
To view as accessible content please use the sections below. (Note that tables and some appendixes are not available as accessible content).
Meeting
The publication discussed was referenced in the meeting below
Policing Performance Committee - 11 October 2022
Date : 11 October 2022
Location : online
Mental Health Dashboard
Much has been said nationally around the level of need expressed by our communities in relation to Mental Health support and this is expected to increase in the coming years as the full impact of post-pandemic recovery combined with increased living costs unfold.
Recognising that police officers are not best placed to support someone in crisis despite their best efforts to be compassionate and proportionate they are not trained mental health professionals. Whilst responding to the best of their ability it is suggested that this risks re-traumatisation and stigmas and that this displaced demand could result in poorer outcomes for individuals.
Whilst national structures such as the Enhanced Mental Health Pathway have a key role in redirecting initial contact by telephone to the correct service from the outset, it is recognised that this is the start of a journey. We need to better understand the fuller implications and demand placed on not only frontline services, but all areas of the organisation.
As a first step in trying to quantify the demand placed on the wider organisation, PPCW and the Demand and Productivity Unit (DPU) have worked together to establish the demand on frontline resource, in terms of call demand. It should be noted that this is purely based on attendance at incidents and does not consider wider impact such as Custody, Public Protection and Multi-Agency meetings and interventions. The first stage was to establish a Power BI Dashboard to understand the initial attendance and response to mental health call demand.
