Action Plan Update

A brief overview of some of the most prominent action within each ‘Health and Wellbeing Goal’ at present is provided below.

HEALTH AND WELLBEING GOAL - IMPROVE WORKFORCE MENTAL HEALTH AND REDUCE SUICIDE

Lifelines Scotland Facilitators

The Lifelines Scotland Facilitators programme continues to be rolled out and currently has a reach of c.2000 people with c.100 active trained facilitators in the organisation. As of November 2024, completion of the training is now recognised within our staff and officer SCOPE records.

Since the September 2024 probationer intake, all probationers receive the Lifelines Scotland input, to coincide with becoming operationally live. This is delivered in-house by our probationary training facilitators.

Lifelines Scotland have recently published an evaluation report (2019-2024) which provides insights into the programme delivery and impact over the 5-year period. The snapshot taken from the report below highlights the engagement of our officers and staff with the programme. The report does explore impact further and we have also previously conducted our own internal evaluation of the programme which enabled us to shape the way forward. We are currently in negotiation with Lifelines Scotland around the update of our current memo of understanding for 2025-2026.

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.

The wellbeing champions activity tracker has been developed and implemented and has allowed us to undertake a review after 9 months of the refreshed network.

Whilst this is demonstrating high level trends, the overall engagement levels from champions in attendance at CPD events and tracker completion has been mixed to low. An action plan to understand why and what works to increase engagement has been developed for this Quarter, Jan – March 2025, with a further review date set for the end of the financial year.

Health and Wellbeing Communications

The Health and Wellbeing intranet site has been reviewed and is now a reliable source of information. As requested through user insights the landing page provides urgent care and support information and links to pages with more detail on specific services. Continuous improvements are being made, for example the occupational health pages now contain instructional videos for the new portal and advice on what makes a good referral.

HEALTH AND WELLBEING GOAL - SET STRATEGIC DIRECTION FOR HEALTH AND WELLBEING WHICH IS EQUITABLE, EVIDENCE INFORMED AND EVALUATED

The National Police Wellbeing Service (Oscar Kilo) Collaboration

The National Police Wellbeing Service (Oscar Kilo) collaboration memo of understanding is under development. The Information Assurance and Security protocols we are establishing through this MoU process will allow us to work together effectively. For example, with regards to benchmarking, utilising the recommended benchmarking tool provided by Oscar Kilo’s National Police Wellbeing Service.

People Strategic Plans

People strategic plans have been developed in collaboration with our People Partners. They contain specific wellbeing measures for local leaders to commit to and be held accountable for. These plans are currently out for consultation. It is anticipated these will be implemented in April 2025.

Health and Wellbeing Governance Board

A review of the purpose and impact of the Health and Wellbeing Governance Board has taken place and it has been decided that moving forward health and wellbeing will report into the recently convened People Board with health and wellbeing to become a standing item on the Boards agenda. This change was implemented in January 2025.

Your Voice Matters

The Your Voice Matters (YVM) staff survey was conducted during summer 2024. In the last few weeks, the headline results have been made available. Health and Wellbeing team contributed to the design of the survey and question bank to develop understanding of workforce perspectives to health and wellbeing. The WHO-5 index questions were incorporated in a bid to establish a benchmark score as a subjective measure of the wellbeing of our workforce. HWB are currently working with the YVM project team to scrutinise the results for further insights which we will report upon during Q4 2024-25.

HEALTH AND WELLBEING GOAL - CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT OF THE DELIVERY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF WELLBEING SERVICES AND CORPORATE FUNCTIONS

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)

• The introduction of the My OH Portal at the beginning of September 2024 has changed how we host all occupational health related activity and provides us with easily accessible levels of data and insights through Power BI.
• An overview of the services delivered since the introduction of My OH Portal in September 2024 is provided below. As can be seen there have been 3501 Occupational Health service requests made during this time.

• The portal allows us to scrutinise each service area, example for the Performance and Attendance Management referrals provided below. This enables us to monitor the service delivery and performance of the contract, identifying areas that may require attention.

Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)

• Since 1 April 2024 we have had 1,287 officer and staff contacts with the EAP service.
• 3,529 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 160 sessions delivered to officers and staff.
• The graphic below displays outcomes after therapy, and as can be seen most clients are experiencing positive outcomes after therapy.

Referring into our EAP & OH services

2.10 Currently colleagues can self-refer into our Employee Assistance Programme. At the last People Committee members asked for Police Scotland to explore the possibility of extending this to our Occupational Health Service (action PC–20241127-001 refers). The possibility of this will be explored as part of our HWB plan goals - ‘Continuous improvement of the delivery and effectiveness of wellbeing services and corporate functions’.

Health and Wellbeing partner forum

Our partners are key in assisting us in how we support our officers and staff; not only as key allies in support of the health and wellbeing work, we do, but also in their own roles, providing support mechanisms and vital networks for our people.

It is essential that we have strong, positive links with these partners and maintain open communication channels to allow both sides to contribute to supporting the wellbeing of our people and to ensure joined up, collaborative relationships. It will also allow Health and Wellbeing to continue to improve engagement with officers and staff, as part of our action following on from the HMICS Frontline Focus- Wellbeing Report (April 2024).

The Health and Wellbeing partner forum held its first meeting in November 2024. The first meeting was a positive and productive beginning to this community, with attendees agreeing to the draft common purpose: Working together to improve the health and wellbeing of everyone in PS and SPA.

The terms of reference (ToR) and ways of working were agreed. In January, the focus was on culture, and follow-up meeting agreed on this topic for February.

HEALTH AND WELLBEING GOAL - DEVELOP A WORKFORCE WHO PRIORITISE WELLBEING

Work is being undertaken to develop a common thread of health and wellbeing content in all learning content throughout the organisation. A summary of some of the ongoing activity is provided below:

• Staff induction HWB content has been updated.
• Health and wellbeing content in probationer training and unit 5 (health and wellbeing) has been reviewed and new content planned for January 2025. Revised learning outcomes will require approval by SQA.
• For Managers, the eLearning HWB related content for the Sergeants Diploma has been reviewed and requires SQA approval to make major changes.
• New HWB content earmarked for the newly promoted Chief Supt and Supt learning programme was piloted with c. 40 civilian investigators in early January 2025. Plans for evaluation are being developed with Leadership and Talent colleagues.
• Senior Investigating Officers (SIO) course review is also underway.