NEWS
LONG COVID SUPPORT GROUP
Metropolitan Police Operational Firearms Commander Barry Calder shares his story of how long Covid has changed his life and led him to set up the first Covid peer support group in policing, helping hundreds of people each day.
I
n March 2020, I was posted to Scotland on one of the royal estates for work. I started to feel a little bit ropey a couple
of weeks after arriving but, and being Scottish myself I am allowed to say this, the weather is terrible up there all of the time and so I thought it was just a cold caused by bad weather and tiredness from the long and extensive work hours. One day, I was getting ready for work
and I remember feeling like I was burning up. I felt severely unwell and wasn’t sure I was even going to make it into the building – I thought I was going to keel over. The first four or five days of it was the sickest I have ever been in my life. My mental health took a battering too. Those first few days, I was having really dark thoughts and was convinced I was going to die. After a week or so, I started to improve and a few weeks later I returned to work. But I still didn’t feel right. I was breathless a lot of the time and had terrible, and extreme, fatigue. I carried on with my day job and
being a Fed rep, but I was struggling. It got to the point where I was driving into work and I would sit in the car, breaking down into tears. And slowly, it got worse and worse. I was pushed, thankfully, into getting help. I went off sick and had counselling. I was in and out of the hospital – back then the doctors realised there was something wrong but they just weren’t sure what it was. They called it a post-Covid syndrome. The mental health implications had really thrown me, as I had never experienced problems with this before. I felt really alone and I didn’t know what was wrong. One of our Met Fed reps, Ollie
Cochran, put me in touch with another rep, Danny Lawrence. Danny had been extremely ill with Covid. We started talking on the phone and it was through this simple act of chatting that we realised mentally, it had made a real difference. We thought there might be a lot more people out there like us, so we decided to push forward, as we felt more needed to be done. From there, we set up the Covid peer support group. Initially, we had about
a dozen members in and now we have more than 160 members. Our group is open to anyone at all
from the Met who has been affected by Covid: people like myself with long Covid, people like Danny who were extremely ill with the initial disease and have been left with terrible medical issues that will last for life, but also people who have had to care for loved ones and also those who have suffered bereavement. We are an open door – if someone feels they need help, then we welcome them in and let them take from us what they think is best for them.
“We are an open door – if someone feels they need help, then we welcome them in.”
We have an online meeting every two weeks called “Coffee and Covid” where we discuss anything and everything – from rehab to medical breakthroughs and other support avenues such as external charities and alternative medicines and therapies. Within our meetings, we also have
Fed and union reps so the various staff associations can give formal advice. We also have Blue Light Champions and mental health first aiders, to help recognise when someone may be starting to struggle. What’s also important as well is a bit
of peer support that is more immediate than our bi-weekly meeting. We have a WhatsApp group with about 50 members – it’s a safe place where people can talk about their everyday problems. It’s there for a bit of reassurance and it works really well. I pen a newsletter every two weeks, full of updates, information and links provided by our group members themselves. They go out and seek out information that is good for them and then we share that in the newsletter in case it could help anyone else. It’s a real team effort. The response from the Senior Management Team down to line managers has been great and has really
Barry Calder and his family
restored my faith in the whole ethos of the police family. The changes that long Covid leaves in
people are huge. If you speak to anyone affected by it, they will tell you this. Eighteen months ago I was a firearms officer in RASP and now I am on adjusted duties and my career is going to end without me being operational. I have been operational my whole career, I never wanted or envisioned in any way, shape or form not being operational. I also have been left with a lifelong heart condition because of Covid. I wouldn’t be in the place I am now if it hadn’t been for the peer support group. Just being able to chat has made a huge difference for me. I still suffer really low and bad days, but, thanks to all the help I got and the counselling, I can recognise it now and know how to look after myself. The group has saved me, and I hope it can do the same for anyone else who may need the support.
Barry Calder at work 27 I POLICE I OCTOBER 2021
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