Charity offers expert help on calls

Nearly 60% of calls to police in some parts of Kent involve people suffering from mental health issues.

Control room officers can lose up to 90 minutes speaking to someone who does not have a genuine emergency and is in need of counselling or support.

But a pioneering project is helping cut time lost to calls that would not usually be a police matter – unless there was an imminent threat of danger to the person on the line or people around them.

It involves wellbeing workers from the Maidstone and MidKent branch of mental health charity Mind operating out of the force’s control room in the town two nights a week.

They work eight-hour shifts to handle such calls, which can involve people threatening to commit suicide, and offer follow-up support to ensure they get the assistance they need.

The Mind Force Control Room project has dealt with an estimated 640 calls since launching on a trial basis in December 2015.

Wayne Goodwin, mental health liaison inspector for Kent Police, said there was high demand for such support.

He said: “Police officers aren’t experts when it comes to dealing with health related incidents. What we find is due to the 24/7 nature of policing and the ease of access to call us via 999 or 101 is that we often become the first point of contact for people in crisis – rather than the last resort.

“We know that around about 20% of all calls to Kent Police seem to have an amount of mental ill health attached to them so there is quite a high demand on officers for calls of this type.

“In Thanet about 50% of all calls have some amount of mental health element and in Medway that is 57%.”

Following its success the project recently received £117,000 from Kent’s police and crime commissioner Matthew Scott to continue for the next three years.

That will pay for a wellbeing worker from the charity to operate in the control room on Tuesday and Saturday nights from 4pm to midnight and continue to provide personal support once the initial call has finished.

Mr Goodwin says the involvement of Mind staff has been invaluable.

“They have the time, they have the training and they are able to support both the call takers within the control room and also officers in providing an alternative, non-law enforcement way of dealing with people in crisis,” he said.

“On average the call takers will take around about four or five calls a shift.

“Some of the calls can be fairly quick, but some of the calls can last up to an hour and a half. We get people that do call us on a regular basis and we look to engagement with those people in slower time.

“The well-being workers have also made calls to GPs to signpost people that might not be accessing GP services.

“They have provided them with mental support, they can look on Kent County Council’s Live it Well website and find out what support is available specifically in the area the person is calling from and through that give them alternatives, give them support within the community and reduce their reliance on calling the police and also on other services they may be trying to access when they don’t need them.”

Mr Goodwin says no one shift is the same and the situations they are dealing with can be life-threatening.

“We get a vastly different variety of calls coming in. There are people who will phone us and they will state they have got some sort of suicidal idea,” he said.

“Before the call is passed to the wellbeing worker from Mind we put it through a threat and risk assessment to see if that call is suitable to pass to the wellbeing worker or if the threat to that person or others around that person is so high that we need to send a patrol.”

Calls are sometimes passed to the wellbeing worker to support the person in crisis while patrol is on its way.

Mental health liaison Inspector Wayne Goodwin says co-operation with Mind has improved support for callers to the police who have mental health issues