Policing in partnership: improving initial responses for vulnerable people
The Home Affairs Select Committee have been keeping me busy this week, with their report on Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) published on Monday and our response to their inquiry into policing and mental health submitted yesterday.
All of this means I’ve been reflecting on the challenges that the police face every day in responding to the vulnerable people they often come across, and what needs to be done at a strategic level to help them respond more effectively.
Recent reports have raised major failings around policing and mental health, including Lord Adebowale’s Independent Commission on Mental Health exploring deaths in Met Police custody, and a recent joint inspectorate review criticising the overuse of police custody as a place of safety under the Mental Health Act.
Members of our service user forum have been at the sharp end of these failings, with one member who has experienced repeated crisis interventions under s136 of the Mental Health Act describing his hugely varying experiences at a recent roundtable, including one occasion where he was tasered and detained in police custody while suffering a mental health crisis and threatening to self-harm.
Improving responses to these crisis incidents has been getting a lot of political attention recently, both from the government and from the first generation of PCCs, who are aware that it places a major drain on police resources. The government have announced a review of s135 and s136 of the Mental Health Act; a new Mental Health Crisis Care Concordat which sets out a blueprint for local areas to agree improved partnership strategies; and a number of ‘street triage’ pilots, which build on schemes in Leicestershire and Cleveland and involve mental health nurses working closely with police officers responding to mental-health-related incidents.
These are very positive steps. However, there is a need to go beyond improving joint-working between the police and mental health trusts to think creatively about how police and partners respond to people facing a whole range of vulnerabilities, including those who are deemed ‘sub-threshold’ to qualify for support from secondary mental health services.
The current system too often fails these people, with members of our forum reporting repeated contacts with the police and other agencies which represented repeated failures to intervene and help them to turn their lives around. National statistics are poor, but research suggests large numbers of those detained for assessment by police under the Mental Health Act are released with no further action being taken – not because they don’t have significant needs, but because they don’t have the right needs to qualify for the ongoing support available.
It is clear that there needs to be robust monitoring of outcomes for all those subject to crisis interventions, and plans to identify and reduce the number of so-called ‘frequent flyers’ who come into police custody regularly without having their underlying problems addressed
However, more also needs to be done to develop alternative options for the police when responding to mental-health-related incidents, whether they are intervening for the safety of the individual or because an offence has been committed.
In our submission to the Committee’s inquiry we highlight two examples:
- The New Directions Service in Warrington, which shows how neighbourhood policing teams can build relationships with community services to respond more effectively to vulnerable individuals both as an alternative to s136, and where low-level anti-social behaviour or offences have been committed.
- An approach under development by the Met Police, ensuring officers recognise and record a broad range of vulnerabilities when they encounter them, and can trigger a MARAC (Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference) meeting with social services partners where somebody shows up repeatedly on the system.
Both of these examples show practical, preventative solutions which could help to intervene earlier in people’s problems and help link to support for a wider range of needs. There are many similar examples across the country – including the services that many women’s centres provide. However, getting the right strategic buy-in and commissioner support for such approaches is crucial to their success, and to ensuring that adequate support pathways are planned and available.
This is where police and crime commissioners come in. The Committee’s report on progress to date for PCCs rightly highlights a number of challenges since their introduction, and suggests that the concept of PCCs is still “on probation”. However, as our checklist for PCCs shows, there is significant potential (and incentive) for them to take a lead in supporting these kinds of partnerships, pulling local agencies together on a shared agenda to tackle these issues. Indeed, a number of PCCs are already doing this, and lessons should be learnt from their approach and their broader ‘and crime’ remit whatever happens to the post in the future.
As the line often goes, police officers are not social workers. However, the very nature of their role means they are dealing with people facing a combination of mental health issues and other health and social problems every day. Both the government and strategic leaders at a local level must work together to make sure they have knowledge, the support, and the partnerships available to respond effectively.
