Home Secretary has today awarded £7.5 million
of funding for a national police welfare service. Writing on
the Police
Oracle website, the Home Secretary said that the
professionalism of the police during a period of four terrorist
incidents in as many months had been “truly humbling”. She also
highlighted the “massive impact” the police have had on crime and
keeping the country safe. Crime traditionally measured by the
Crime Survey for England and Wales is down by a third since 2010.
Home Secretary said:
I’ve seen first-hand the commitment shown by you, our police
officers. I am very aware that your uniquely challenging work
can easily place stressful demands on you. The things you see,
the dreadful stories you hear, the frightening situations in
which you can find yourself must, in some cases, have an impact
on someone’s personal well-being and their mental health.
It’s only right that policing does all it can to provide high
quality support for officers and staff.
So today, I am awarding £7.5 million from the police
transformation fund over three years to pilot and - if it is
successful - fund a dedicated national service to help provide
enhanced welfare support, which if you need it, you can rely
on.
The new service will complement the support already delivered at
force level to serving police officers and staff, covering mental
health advice and welfare support. To help identify where
additional support and coordination is needed, the college will
begin an immediate exercise to finalise the details of the
national police welfare service.
Plans will be developed over the coming months by the College of
Policing, working very closely with Police Federation. The
service will initially be tested in a pilot and, subject to its
success, will be rolled out across the country between 2018 and
2020. The college’s work to deliver a national police welfare
service will complement their existing work on staff welfare,
which includes guidance on officer and staff safety and support
in high stress environments.
Last financial year, the police transformation fund awarded £74
million police-led projects including bids commissioned by the
police reform and transformation board. This included funding to
tackle modern slavery and expand the graduate recruitment scheme,
Police Now.
Set up as part of the spending review in 2015, the fund, which is
police-led through the police reform and transformation board, is
designed to allocate extra investment to continue the job of
reform and shape policing for the future. Police and Crime
Commissioners and chief constable representatives sit on the
board alongside senior leaders in policing, with the final
decisions on bids made by the Home Secretary.
