WELFARE
RIGHT CARE RIGHT PERSON
‘Right Care, Right Person’ is designed to ensure that when there are concerns for a person’s welfare linked to mental health, medical or social care issues, the right person with the right skills, training and experience will respond
Right Care, Right Person (RCRP) is an operational model developed by Humberside Police that changes the way the emergency services respond to calls involving concerns about mental health. It is in the process of being rolled out across the UK as part of ongoing work between police forces, health providers and Government. RCRP is a programme of work that has been carried out over a three-year period involving partners in ambulance, mental health, acute hospitals, and social services. These partnerships ensure RCRP can achieve its aim to provide the best care to the public by ensuring the most appropriate response to calls. This reduces stress on the police and health agencies responding to these requests. On average, Humberside Police
identified that the force was deployed to an average of 1,566 incidents per month relating to issues such as concerns for welfare, mental health incidents or missing persons. This meant that the force was spending
mental health trauma, and we saw an exponential steep rise over a decade. “What became apparent to me was two things, is it right that a police officer is caring for someone who’s not a criminal, they are not bad, they’re just sick. We do get training and we have got an awareness, but I’m not a doctor, I’m not a mental health nurse, I’m not a mental health practitioner but for whatever reason, that demand was being passed more and more onto the police service. “If it gets to a point where you can’t do some of your actual raisin d’etre, your day-to-day job, that’s simply not right.
“Most of these calls involve vulnerable people who are ill and who are not criminals, and it is absolutely vital that these people get the right care from the right people.”
a lot of time attending calls that they were not fully equipped to handle or provide the best care for those involved. This was putting both the public and the officers at risk. Paul Anderson, Deputy Chief Constable of Humberside police, also the senior responsible officer for RCRP was involved in leading, developing and implementing the program said, “Most of these calls involve vulnerable people who are ill and who are not criminals, and it is absolutely vital that these people get the right care from the right people.” Attending such calls meant that the police were not responding to the public in the most effective way and the forces’ ability to attend calls for services that did require a police response was affecting the service delivery. “Anyone involved in policing could actually see the frightening level of jobs, where we were dealing with people in
We wanted to make sure that the right agency dealt with health-related calls, instead of the police being the default first responder as is currently the case in most areas.” explained Paul. Paul touched on the fact that no one who is suffering from mental health should end up in a police van or a cell cage as this will likely worsen their condition and further their distress, rather, they deserve to be seen and helped by those who are trained to do so. As a result of implementing Right Care, Right Person, Humberside saw the average incidents per month reduce by 540 deployments – equating to 1,441 officer hours. This has allowed the force to reallocate resources to other specialist teams. Paul explains what kind of effect RCRP
has had on Humberside police, saying, “Just prior to our starting, the calls that came in, in relation to welfare and mental health, we attended 78% of the calls in that category at the highest peak and now, we are attending about 30%, a significant reduction.
“We are simply not going to all the calls, but what we are doing is we’re going to the right calls, because if someone is in danger, we’re still going to go because as police, we still do three things. We protect the King’s peace, we prevent and we detect crime, and we protect life. “With deployments to mental health calls becoming less and less, this means we now spend more time dealing with core policing initiatives. We’re also seeing a reduced number of calls because the wider system is now adapting and working with us. It’s realised this wasn’t appropriate.” Speaking on the impact of RCRP, Paul explains further how this program has helped free resources to be used elsewhere saying, “We’ve taken that capacity and we’ve reinvested it in vulnerability. And what we’ve done is we’ve created locate teams, teams that primarily look for missing children. “We have saved at least 1,441 hours a month and with that kind of capacity, we’ve created a team that can tackle another area of vulnerability, and that in turn is getting looked after children when they’re missing, returned far, far quicker than they ever did. “One of the other important areas this program has affected is the partnerships we have with the services involved are stronger. At the beginning there was a lot of anxiety with our health partners absolutely no doubt about that. What’s happened is we formed a really effective task and finish group where all elements of health system came together, and they looked to solve the problems as a collective.” The commitment to protect the most vulnerable in our communities continues through the use of RCRP. With the implementation of this program, calls can be handled more effectively by putting the individual at the very heart of decision- making and the right care can be provided by the most appropriate professional.
45 | POLICE | AUGUST | 2023
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