MORE needs to be done to ease officers\u2019 workloads if their mental health is to be preserved, Essex Police Federation has warned.<\/p>\n
The force must work harder to preserve officers\u2019 rest days and to stop piling the work on, Mark Smith, Federation Chairman said.<\/p>\n
Rates of stress, depression and other mental health issues are rising, new figures have shown.<\/p>\n
In total, 353 officers reported incidents of mental illness in the financial year to the end of March \u2013 an increase of 24% from the year before. Of these, 200 reported stress as the reason for their absence.<\/p>\n
Mr Smith said officers needed time off to recuperate from the demands of the job and said the force should recognise when too many demands are being placed on its staff.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI\u2019d like the force to stop cancelling officers\u2019 rest days. I\u2019d like the force to actually acknowledge that we are where we are with the resources we have. And if we haven\u2019t got enough resources then the Chef Constable and senior officers need to stand up and say, \u2018No, I\u2019m sorry we cannot do that anymore\u2019, and the PCC needs to back it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Smith blamed workloads, insufficient breaks, the cancellation of rest days and lack of recovery time for officers\u2019 poor mental health.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI don\u2019t think officers are being allowed to recover. I don\u2019t think they\u2019re being able to carry the workloads that\u2019s expected of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn top of that you\u2019ve got officers not being able to deal with cases how they would like to, not being able to respond to people when they\u2019re asking for help. All plays on people\u2019s minds as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know Essex Police are working with MIND now, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s enough, and I think it\u2019s too little too late.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot more that needs to be done looking at workloads and what officers are having to carry as far as victims of crime files, for example.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t got the money, we haven\u2019t got the resources, and they\u2019re running their main asset into the ground and causing serious mental health problems. It\u2019s a vicious circle and a downward spiral.\u201d<\/p>\n
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MORE needs to be done to ease officers\u2019 workloads if their mental health is to be preserved, Essex Police Federation has warned. The force must work harder to preserve officers\u2019\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2880"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2884,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880\/revisions\/2884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}