THE stresses and strains of being a police officer can take their toll, sometimes tragically leading to them taking their own lives.<\/p>\n
Preventing suicides and tackling mental health in the force remains a huge question which Federations across England and Wales are taking very seriously.<\/p>\n
Essex Police Federation says it\u2019s putting the issue front and centre.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a big issue and mental health awareness is something that we\u2019re acutely aware of here in Essex having lost a colleague in recent years to mental health,\u201d Federation Chairman Steve Taylor said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been at the forefront of our work for a while and I think that puts us in a strong place.<\/p>\n
\u201cMental health is not a dirty word and we work hard to support that position with training for managers, Live Well Feel Well courses available for officers and managers and supervisors, and things like that. There\u2019s always more to do in this area and it\u2019s a complex problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we have to keep doing what we\u2019re doing, keep having those open conversations, bringing mental health out from the shadows so that ultimately it\u2019s treated the same as a physical injury, a visible, physical injury,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important the Federation acts as a \u2018critical friend\u2019 of the force, he added, to ensure that any programmes tackling the issue deliver what they need to for officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe work really hard in the Federation not to allow the force to divorce itself from its welfare responsibilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to misconduct, when it comes to unsatisfactory performance, when it comes to post-incident procedure. In all of these areas the force leads on the welfare of its officers, and we take the position as critical friend to the force in that role really seriously.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s positive place to be and long may it continue in Essex,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE stresses and strains of being a police officer can take their toll, sometimes tragically leading to them taking their own lives. Preventing suicides and tackling mental health in the\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3764,"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\/4982"}],"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=4982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4983,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4982\/revisions\/4983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}