Further Detail

Health and Wellbeing Programme Approach

The diagram below articulates our refreshed approach towards a proactive, preventative and person-centred health and wellbeing focus. The approach intends to understand and consider the needs of our people, ensuring that we don’t only engage with our people in reaction to a wellbeing issue, but that we make an impact in terms of prevention and mitigation of factors. The focus (prevent, mitigate and undo) is depicted in colour within the plan. Please appendix 1 for the full plan.

Dependencies & Achievability

We recognise there are dependencies that we need to consider to ensure the plan is both realistic and achievable. We continue to work with colleagues across People & Development and the wider organisations to consider and plan accordingly. These include:  

• An imminent People and Development restructure consultation; it is hoped that this will begin in late October/early November 2024.  
• Force-wide and senior leadership support and engagement with the programme.
• Force-wide engagement with and delivery of plan.  
• HWB team resources and expertise in place to undertake the plan.
• Specific financial support if it is felt external expertise is needed to progress i.e. recent independent review of health and wellbeing conducted by external organisation, Thrivewise. 

Current Action Plan Update Areas  

Whilst the development of the plan has been taking place many of the actions are already ongoing. A brief overview of some of the most prominent areas at present is provided below. 

Workforce Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Action Plan - World Suicide Prevention Day 
 
“1 in 5 of us struggle with suicidal thoughts in our lifetime" (Samaritans). World Suicide Prevention Day was held on 10 September 2024, with the theme “changing the narrative on suicide”. This year’s associated call-to-action, set by the International Association for Suicide Prevention was ‘Start the Conversation’. The Health and Wellbeing Team planned and delivered an interactive workshop to 78 people, exploring what suicide prevention currently looks like in Police Scotland/SPA and how we can help shape the future of this work within our organisation.  

From the workshop discussions, we have taken the following actions:  

• Workforce suicide prevention mapping: We have undertaken a mapping exercise which helps us to recognise the existing work in this space and potentially how this work can be aligned to greater effect. 
• Lived experiences: The importance of lived experience was raised at this session and ties into our plans to create some new lived experience videos. 
• Wellbeing learning programme content: We are working with colleagues internally to update and enhance wellbeing content which exists in current learning programmes throughout PS/SPA. This is an ongoing/long-term piece of work but will ensure a well-considered, relevant wellbeing curriculum for officers, staff and those who are line managers to support them in undertaking their roles.

Wellbeing Champions 

The number of HWB champions is still at circa 240 across the organisation. The aim of the Wellbeing Champions network is to support colleagues’ health and wellbeing. Champions can offer a confidential listening service, and they can also help by signposting people to relevant support. Our data for August shows us: 

• we received 94 responses to the activity tracker.
• most champions spent 1-2 hours on Champion activities with 11 people reporting 7+ hours.
• The types of activity recorded by HWB Champions is on the graph below.  Most activity is recorded as contact with colleagues, followed by contact with line managers. 

• The signposting activity graph below shows most signposting is to our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP).

The National Police Wellbeing Service (Oscar Kilo) Collaboration 

Health and wellbeing are currently developing a memorandum of understanding with The National Police Wellbeing Service (Oscar Kilo). This will offer us an opportunity to not only access some of the good practice currently in place but also to work with the UK-wide blue light network to be at the forefront of new developments. 

Trauma Risk Management

Since April we have seen more than 340 referrals into the TRiM programme with an average of 7 officers/staff per referral. The main reason for referral continues to include road traffic collisions (RTC), suicide, sudden deaths and other fatalities.

We have implemented a post-TRiM direct-referral process into EAP which aims to ensure our officers and staff receive that prompt support when required.  

Maintaining the network of co-ordinators is still an ongoing challenge. Officers move roles relatively often and keeping on top these moves to ensure TRiM co-ordinator cover remains isn’t easy. There has been a recruitment drive across many divisions with new assessors being trained in K, C, E and N Division. The ‘note of interest’ submission numbers were fantastic which shows a real willingness of colleagues to be involved in the delivery of support to others.   

To support learning across the existing assessor and coordinator network 4 refresher training events have also been delivered over the last 8 weeks.  

Occupational Health (OH) and Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)

Health and wellbeing continue to work with our delivery partners, OH – Optima Health and EAP – Vivup, on the monitoring and performance of the service provided. Some headlines are summarised below: 

Occupational Health (OH)

• Since 1 April 2024 we have had 3180 touch points with Occupational Health through management referrals.
• This year has seen a significant increase in the number of recruitment medicals delivered with 678 to date due to our increase in intake numbers.
• Physiotherapy is also on the rise with 1249 assessments and treatments sessions delivered this year. 
• The new My OH Portal was introduced at the beginning of September 2024. The portal will host all occupational health related activity moving forward and will provide us with a new level of data and insights through Power BI. 
• The HWB team, in conjunction with the Optima Health clinical team, held a series of ‘What makes a good referral’ virtual sessions aimed at our line managers, with nearly 400 attending across the month. 
• Since 3 September over 2140 officer and staff accounts have been created on the new portal.
• The chart below shows the level of activity managed on the portal between 3 September and 16 October this year:

Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)

• Since 1 April we have had 901 officer and staff contacts with the EAP service.
• 2507 sessions of support have been delivered, these vary from in-the-moment support via telephone, to virtual and face to face.
• This support also includes more specialist support in the form of Pure Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR) with over 90 sessions delivered to officers and staff to date.
• As of the end of August, 92% of clients receiving therapy were experiencing positive outcomes after the therapy.