ESSEX police officers are struggling with heavy workloads and say they can suffer with low mood, stress and anxiety.<\/p>\n
The latest PFEW Demand, Capacity and Welfare Survey reveals that 71% of respondents from the force say their workloads are too high, while 85% said they were not enough officers in the county for them to do their job properly.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Worryingly, 79% reported they had felt symptoms of low mood, stress and anxiety in the 12 months leading up to the survey.<\/p>\n
Essex Police Federation Chairman Steve Taylor said the survey painted a depressing picture of policing.<\/p>\n
However, he was pleased that officers are now more likely to come forward to express they are struggling with their mental health and that negative sentiment around how they will be treated if they do was declining.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was quite interesting is Essex officers know that there are reinforcements on the horizon in terms of officer numbers, and yet still they are more concerned than in 2016 [when the last Demand survey took place] with their own workloads, with the amount that they are doing, with their ability to take leave, even knowing that back-up is on the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought that painted quite a depressing picture.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe figures around reporting mental health [56% said they had come forward] and the fact that just 30% feel they would be viewed negatively if they do \u2013 a drop from the 2016 survey \u2013 are the positives and reflect some of the hard work that is going into mental health provision in Essex.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were improvements across the board on how it\u2019s perceived, how it\u2019s dealt with. But even that needs the heavy caveat that we can\u2019t take anything for granted and there\u2019s always more work we can do regarding mental health.\u201d Steve added.<\/p>\n
The single crewing figures \u2013 66% of officers said they \u2018often\u2019 or \u2018always\u2019 go out single crewed and the response rate to the survey (13% of officers took part) were concerns for Steve.<\/p>\n
\u201cSingle crewing is a symptom of police cuts and at local level we take steps to protect officers, risk assessing jobs that they\u2019re going to.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still have officers that are double crewed, we just try and manage some of the other demand with single crewing. Depending on station to station, supervisors will have their own interpretation of what that looks like.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut even when all that is done, we still deal with volatile, unpredictable people from time to time, and it doesn\u2019t matter if there\u2019s one of you, two of you, five of you, it can still be a risky business.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe [response rate] was disappointingly small. I understand survey fatigue and I understand officers doing survey after survey and perhaps not seeing much change.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the risk is whilst it might be within the statistical variance, it might still be a credible survey in terms of reporting it\u2019s not much of a mandate is it? Do we need a survey to tell us policing is stressful and demanding?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ESSEX police officers are struggling with heavy workloads and say they can suffer with low mood, stress and anxiety. The latest PFEW Demand, Capacity and Welfare Survey reveals that 71%\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10636,"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\/7692"}],"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=7692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7753,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7692\/revisions\/7753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}