FACE-to-face debriefs with colleagues who have been exposed to trauma \u2013 rather an online questionnaire – could help officers cope with what they are faced with at work, Essex Police Federation says.<\/p>\n
Finding one standard programme to help all officers is complicated by the fact that individuals react differently to the stress they are put under, Steve Taylor Chairman of Essex Police Federation said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He was speaking following the recent PFEW Roads Policing Conference in Leicestershire which reviewed the level of trauma officers are exposed to.<\/p>\n
Roads policing and firearms officers together with colleagues dealing with child sexual abuse cases are at most risk, the Conference was told.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople\u2019s ability to healthily process trauma is unique to them and therefore it\u2019s difficult to put in place a hard and fast process around it because that\u2019s such a unique area to the individual,\u201d Steve said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is always more that we can do when it comes to preventative screening for officers and my personal view is the current system of completing an online questionnaire is a product of the austere times occupational health teams have been working under and it\u2019s not the ideal.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnline questionnaires can be manipulated, there are workarounds, and that means that they are a false and potentially dangerous indicator of the levels of trauma officers are trying to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve says more face-to-face screening could help as part of ensuring how officers cope with what they have to deal with is spoken about.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d love to see a move to more face-to-face screening,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I do so fully cognisant of the fact that it costs money. It may not be where we are now.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s just not be too complacent with what we have. There\u2019s always more that we can do when it comes to mental health.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, in the preventative sense we\u2019re talking about screening, but also we\u2019re talking about that cultural work which we can all play a part in and which actually doesn\u2019t cost very much at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a mantra you hear me trip out time and time again because it\u2019s important. Mental health is not a dirty word. We need to be open and we need to be frank in how we deal with it when we encounter it in the workplace.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FACE-to-face debriefs with colleagues who have been exposed to trauma \u2013 rather an online questionnaire – could help officers cope with what they are faced with at work, Essex Police\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7640,"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\/7589"}],"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=7589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7661,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589\/revisions\/7661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}