New plan unveiled to protect wellbeing of police officers

Health and Safety representatives from the 43 forces in England and Wales, as well as representatives from the Scottish Police Federation; the Police Federation for Northern Ireland; and three of our non-home forces – the British Transport Police,Civic Nuclear Constabulary and Ministry of Defence Police, have been presented with the Federation’s nine-point stress plan, the aim of which is to help forces better prioritise on officer wellbeing. 

Released as a national template at this stage, it will help forces improve their focus on officer welfare.  Representatives will now take the template to their respective forces in order to agree a way forward in terms of achieving a strong commitment at force level to better support officer health and wellbeing.

With stress being one of the biggest reasons for absence, there is growing momentum to tackle the issue with initiatives from many stakeholders, including the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC); the College of Policing (Oscar Kilo project); and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

Federation lead for health and safety Jason Kwee has been instrumental in pulling together the new nine-point stress plan, which was presented at the NPCC’s Health and Safety working group and accepted in principle. It is hoped that this template will work in conjunction with the work that is already being done under ‘Oscar Kilo’

Jason Kwee said: “As a forum, we looked at what was in place to tackle stress in the workplace. 
We were only able identify one risk-based process to identify and reduce stress which was the HSE management standards (SMS).
   
“Through consultations and surveys that were undertaken, we quickly identified that there were different levels of implementations across forces, some had real successes and other force policies hadn’t been updated for years.

“With the additional evidence from the national PFEW Demand, capacity and welfare survey, we were able to back up what we already knew - there was not enough being done to support the welfare and mental health of our officers.

“It is important to that make clear that this is not a duplicate piece of work and that this ties in with the principles of ‘Oscar Kilo’. It brings those principles and other factors together on one document.

“We are asking all our health and safety leaders to have discussions with their respective chairs and secretaries, and of course chief officers, as to how this may support their local wellbeing programme.”

A copy of the nine-point stress plan template can be viewed here