Firearms Officers and Mental Health Support

Response

1. How many officers do you have within your firearms/ARV department

108

 

2. How many of these officers are male? How many of these officers are female?

101 male

7 female

 

3. How many male officers within the firearms/ARV department are currently on a leave of absence due to stress/anxiety/mental health?
4. How many female officers within the firearms/ARV department are currently on a leave of absence due to stress/anxiety/mental health?

In relation to questions 3 and 4, I can advise that three of the 108 officers are on leave due to stress, anxiety or mental health related reasons as of the date of research, 07 February.  The requested breakdown by gender has been withheld under the following exemption:

 

• Section 40(2)  – Personal Information.

Any information to which a request relates is exempt if it constitutes personal data and would contravene any of the data protection principles.

Personal data relates to a living individual who can be identified directly from the information, or identifiable indirectly in combination with other available information.

This is an absolute exemption if disclosure would breach any of the data protection principles.  This means that we cannot be compelled to disclose information in the public interest.

A Freedom of Information disclosure is a disclosure to the world. Therefore, information that is provided can be viewed by any member of the public. Should information be provided from which a living individual could be identified this would constitute a breach of rights provided under the Data Protection Act 2018.  Information held on an individual by Avon and Somerset Police is done so lawfully and is used for a policing purpose in line with the principles set out in the UK GDPR. Our privacy policy can be viewed here.

This serves as a partial refusal notice under section 17(1) of the FOI Act.

 

5. How many officers in total within the firearms/ARV department went on a leave of absence within the year of 2023 due to stress/anxiety/mental health?

5

 

6. How many officers in total within the firearms/ARV department went on a leave of absence within the year of 2024 due to stress/anxiety/mental health?

2

 

7. What current support does your force have in place to help all officers who are struggling with stress/anxiety/mental health? 

 

Avon and Somerset Police have a range of support in place as described below.  This is structured as follows:

 

• Primary support – information accessible to all staff and officers to improve their health and wellbeing.
• Secondary support – accessible via peers and line manager, to assist in improving health and wellbeing.
• Professional support – this includes specialist and medical support.

 

Primary support includes force wide resources on the subject of stress, anxiety and mental health, available to employees on our intranet site.  These include blog posts, videos, policies and procedures and information sign-posting to external support available.  We have also had wellbeing events and webinars focusing on stress, anxiety and mental health.

Wellbeing, including anxiety, stress and mental health is also covered in a number of training courses, including the Personal Development Toolkit, as well as First- and Middle-Line Management Leadership Courses.

 

Secondary support includes trained Mental Health First Aiders (MHFAs) across all directorates in the force.  MHFAs are a point of contact for employees who are experiencing a mental health issue or emotional distress, or who are concerned about another individual in this regard.  Some MHFAs have assessed wellbeing Dogs, as part of the Oscar Kilo wellbeing and trauma support dogs service (OK9).

 

Further support is available through our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), which offers employees independent advice, psychological support and counselling.

 

Our Occupational Health Services also include:

 

• Psychological Support Scheme (PSS):
• The core functions of the PSS are to support the health and wellbeing of individual staff to ensure that they have sufficient resilience to carry out their role, and to help prevent and address psychological difficulties related to the role.

 

• Therapy and psychological support provision:
• The Therapy team work with presenting issues which include common mental health problems relating to work, such as trauma, depression, anxiety, stress, or burnout, insomnia and sleep problems.

 

• Trauma Risk Management (TRiM):
• Avon and Somerset Police operate a TRiM programme (Trauma Risk Management) to provide support and assistance for colleagues who wish to access it.  TRiM practitioners can escalate and refer police officers or staff for psychological assessment and potential therapy in line with NICE guidance.

 

• Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) screening –
• Any officer who works within the DVI field will undergo pre-course screening which includes health, vaccination, psychological and family support related questions. They will then undertake pre-deployment and post-deployment checks including psychological screening which may result in signposting to Force Psychological Therapy team (PT) and, or Employee Assistance Programme (EAP).

 

Where officers and staff have been involved in a potentially traumatic situation such as an incident involving a death or serious injury, we have a Post Incident Procedure (PIP) that provides an opportunity to ensure staff are looked after. A post incident procedure will allow line managers and SLT to put vital support in place at an early stage.

 

Support is available nationally through the National Police Wellbeing Service | Oscar Kilo

 

8. What current support does you force have in place to help all officers specifically within the firearms/ARV department?

 

Specific support would be identified and accessed via the routes listed above, including Occupational Health referral support and comprehensive Post Incident management support.