About us | Oscar Kilo

The National Police Wellbeing Service (NPWS) was launched in 2019 to provide support and guidance for police forces across England and Wales to improve and build organisational wellbeing.

It is an evidence based, sector specific service which has been developed for policing, by policing, and is designed to meet the unique needs of police forces, officers and staff.

What we do

Sitting with the College of Policing, and working closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Home Office, we want to:

help police forces build world–class wellbeing support for everyone who works for them
improve knowledge and understanding of help and support available
reduce stigma around seeking support or help
encourage people to support themselves and realise their own potential
improve personal resilience and self-help skills

Our services

We aim to do this by providing practical support in seven key areas.

Clinical governance including occupational health - The clinical governance group (CGG) has been established to lead and oversee clinical interventions that support the police wellbeing agenda. The CGG will set the strategic direction for, and deliver priorities in relation to, medical and occupational health policy and standards.
Healthy living - This brings together the work Oscar Kilo is doing in the areas of sleep, nutrition and physical health. There are ongoing academic studies in these areas, along with webinars and services to help inform and keep you up to date with the latest findings.
Operation Hampshire - This area provides a strategy, processes and guidance to help us respond more effectively to assaults on police officers and staff.
Peer support for wellbeing - Our peer support training programme provides forces with all the need to be able to implement a robust and fully functioning peer support network. Our aim is to create a consistent, national approach to peer support and a national network of trained peer supporters.
Psychological and trauma risk management - This includes our emergency services trauma intervention programme (ESTIP), our structured interview training and our psychological risk assessment programme and post incident support programme.
Wellbeing dogs - The Oscar Kilo wellbeing and trauma support dogs service aims to build on local police wellbeing dog services and make wellbeing dogs available to all forces who wish to introduce a dog as part of their wellbeing provision.
Wellbeing vans - The wellbeing outreach service is a fleet of bespoke fitted vans which can deploy to operating bases across England and Wales, providing a platform to deliver physical, psychological, and financial health checks for officers and staff.

Go to services

Our resources

We want everyone to feel the benefits of what we do.

We want every member of the police service to feel confident that their wellbeing is taken seriously, and that they are properly supported by their organisation.

Although our primary focus is to provide support at an organisational level, we also have resources available directly for officers and staff which can be accessed online at any time including:

online webinars focusing on fatigue and building resilience
mindfulness training - MindFit Cop
wellbeing podcast interviews - ‘Keeping the Peace’
physical fitness videos
self-care tips and advice
wellbeing news, real-life stories and experiences
awareness campaigns and materials including posters, videos and animations
signposting to other helpful organisations and sources of support

Go to resources

Additional support and guidance

We also provide additional support and guidance to policing organisations through:

the Blue Light Wellbeing Framework (BLWF) – a benchmarking tool for forces to assess their wellbeing provision
the national police wellbeing survey – a national survey providing every member of the policing workforce across England and Wales the opportunity to tell us how they truly feel at work
resources for use locally to promote wellbeing
signposting to guidance and evidence based research around emergency services wellbeing
access to communities of practice both UK and International

Learning and continuous improvement

The NPWS is based on learning and continuous improvement and so what we offer will grow and change over time.

The team is also working hard behind the scenes to scan and develop the wellbeing landscape through evidence based research, and using expert reference groups, staying on top of national and international trends.

This helps us look to the future and ensure we can continue to provide the most efficient and effective services to the forces that we’re working with.

Find out more about how we’re doing this below in 'More about the service'.

More about the service

The NPWS programme consists of a series of coordinated activities, events and measures to deliver the 'common goal for police wellbeing' vision, associated change and benefits of a holistic approach to psychological health and wellbeing supporting police forces to sustainably grow and manage their workforce.

Find out more

Introduction to Oscar Kilo, the National Police Wellbeing Service

Find out what we are about and the services we offer. This video can be used to promote the service locally giving officers and staff a better understanding of how we support them and their forces to improve wellbeing in policing.

Video transcript

We in policing experience several hundred traumatic events in our working life, whereas a general member of the public might experience one or two. It’s vital that the culture of an organisation, the leadership of the organisation and the interventions and support that organisation has got are all lined up.

It’s such a big issue wellbeing that, you know, some people don’t know where to start. Oscar Kilo, the National Wellbeing Service, gives you a framework to start planning, whether it’s in your office, your department, your division, your whole force. Our goal is to provide world class support for those people who work in the incredibly and challenging environment of law enforcement policing in this country.

One of the great things about wellbeing is that there’s a huge community of people out there, people who do tons of stuff around wellbeing on top of their day job, because they care passionately about it. By having workshops with those professionals we will bring into that research, knowledge, good practice, make sure if there’s more research needs to be done we can get it done and rapidly turn it into good stuff on the frontline. Those workshops have been really successful, it’s brought those professionals together and their information has helped inform where we take the service next, as well.

The vans are a big part of what we have always wanted to achieve in Oscar Kilo, that is getting out and about to the people who are often overlooked, those hard to reach people, the ones who are doing the vital work on the frontline. We’ve had over 10,000 people so far go through the vans getting physical health checks, psychological health checks, it’s had a massive impact already wherever those vans have gone. We have now got a fleet of ten vehicles, we’ve got fleet management that will rotate those vehicles around the country and the ability to go out and meet people actually where they work.

So it’s all about prevention and to do prevention well you’ve got to go and park your vehicles up where people work, put on a cup of tea, put some cakes on and invite people in. Our objective is there’s over 200,000 people work in policing, for every single one of those people to have seen those vans and had the offer to go and have a health check.

We want to take our fleet of vehicles out, not just do health checks with them but also deliver training at operational bases using the latest technology with the latest research to create the type of environment where people are not just coming to work to survive their day, their shift, but they are here thriving in what is an incredibly exciting, interesting and meaningful job.

Wellbeing in policing is here to stay. The National Wellbeing Service is part and parcel of the driving force behind changing our culture, improving our services and, most importantly of all, listening to the people who actually do the work to find out what it is that needs to be done so that they can continue delivering a fantastic service to the public.

Do you need 1-2-1 support?

Please note that we do not have a helpline or provide individual 1-2-1 support.

If you have found us and are looking for direct support, or if you need to talk to someone, please contact your GP, your force occupational health unit, or visit our signposts page, which will give you a number of other options.

Go to signposts