Welcome to the Oscar Kilo, National Police Wellbeing Service bulletin for May 2022.
Read on to find out what we have been up to and what to expect from us in June.
What we’ve done in May
PTSD in the police: How primary care can help
On the 3 May we held a free webinar with the Royal College of GPs, addressing the roles, challenges, and associated health issues within modern policing and how a GP can approach particular needs and support the police force.
If you missed the event, but would be interested in finding out more, you can watch the webinar back using this link
National Survey Results
This year’s national police wellbeing survey saw the highest response yet with 36,633 officers, staff and volunteers taking part – which is a 60% increase on the number of respondents from last year.
There were 18,600 (13.2%) police officer respondents (of all ranks). Over 15,100 (19.8%) were police staff (of all grades), over 1,400 were PCSOs, 231 special constables and 131 volunteers.
The findings for police officers particularly, confirm that policing continues to be a challenging and stressful occupation. General wellbeing returned to pre-pandemic levels, and job satisfaction and a sense of being valued by the public have declined.
However, having a sense of meaningful work remains at a high level, as does the sense of connection to colleagues and overall mental wellbeing.
We have also seen an increase in a sense of competence, and a decrease in depression.
Leadership skills of front-line police officers and staff is a key priority for policing and the findings in this survey have demonstrated how critical supportive leadership is to individual wellbeing, and attitudes and behaviours.
This will be drawn into the ongoing work within the College of Policing to develop the National Police Leadership Centre, which will have an initial focus on first-line supervisors.
Training Update
The training team delivered a full range of courses in May 2022, including a face to face Peer Support course and 8 courses delivered on MS Teams
- Two Demobilising and Defusing courses, for two forces which 17 police officers and police staff attended
- Three Peer Support courses for two forces which 31 police officers and police staff attended
- Two Police Superintendents Association (PSA) Peer Support courses for 12 forces which 21 Chief Superintendents and Superintendents attended
- One Supervisor Wellbeing course for one force which four police officers and police staff attended
- One Post Incident Support course for one force which 12 policers and police staff attended
Therefore in total 85 officers and staff attended training with NPWS in May 2022 and we engaged with 15 different forces.
Overall the feedback for the training was very good. Comments include:
Peer Support – So glad I went on the course …. I will be promoting it to everyone. The trainer was fantastic knowledge and approachable.
Demobilising and Defusing – this should be delivered to all supervisors
PSA Peer Support - The course was superb – thank you
PISP – Course trainers excellent
What’s coming up in June
Training in June
June 2022 is a very busy month for the training team and you can see the range of courses on being delivered on the website. We also have a Peer Support webinar schedule for the 30 June 2022, being opened by Andy Rhodes, so if you have not already signed up and would like to attend please contact us.
Details of many of our training opportunities and events and information on how to access can be found in our 'Events and training' section.
National Response Policing week of action
We’re supporting the National Response Policing week of action that will take place in forces across the country 13–20 June 2022
The date marks the beginning of the second national Response Policing ‘week of action’, which in addition to celebrating the professionalism and courage of response officers, is also an opportunity to recognise the challenges facing response policing and consider the future development of a key role that sits at the heart of policing.
We are supporting the NPCC, College of Policing and the Police Federation, this week to deliver a range of initiatives, co-ordinated specifically to support, develop and recognise the role of response officers.
Our wellbeing vans and dogs will be deployed across the UK, along with a series of webinars from our team around sleep, fatigue and resilience.
Better Sleep Webinar
On Thursday 16 June at 2pm we will be holding a brand new 'Better Sleep' webinar: Sleep and managing your body clock.
In this brand new webinar, hosted by Sleep Scientist Dr Sophie Bostock, you will learn and discuss coping strategies on improving your sleep when working on shifts, balancing the demands of work and your family and how to adjust your body clock.
Remember all our previous webinar are available for anyone to watch, you just need to create an Oscar Kilo account on this website. The Better Sleep webinars, sleep improvement course and other police specific resources will be available from the blue drop down menu under 'Your Account' once you are logged in.
Suicide Postvention Toolkit
In February, a suicide prevention consensus statement was agreed by the National Police Wellbeing Service, the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC), College of Policing (CoP), Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC), Home Office, Unison, Police Federation and Police Superintendents Association.
Now that the statement is agreed and published, we have funded and commissioned a toolkit working closely with the Samaritans given their expertise in this area. The toolkit will be made available in the coming weeks and we’ll be making it available on this website.