National recommendation - The College of Policing, February 2023

The IOPC recommends the College of Policing expand and update its Authorised Professional Practice (APP) on safe and well checks to ensure it includes:

• circumstances where the safe and well check request relates to a member of the public who is not experiencing mental ill health
• relevant legislation and the broad criteria in deciding whether police should attend requests from members of the public and other agencies to check on the wellbeing of a member of the public
• the importance of effective communication and partnership working with ambulance, fire and other agencies, alongside an escalation process if there is a dispute about which is the most appropriate agency to attend
• ensuring the caller understands whether police will attend

This recommendation follows an an IOPC review of a local death and serious injury (DSI) investigation by West Yorkshire Police’s professional standards department in which a man’s friend reported concerns for his welfare to the police and he was subsequently found to have died at his home address. In this case control room staff decided that their threshold for responding to requests for safe and well checks was not met and the ambulance service were the most appropriate agency to respond. However, the man’s friend was not told that police would not attend until she called back to chase the police, and the ambulance service were unable to allocate an ambulance to attend the man’s home for over four hours. When callers wrongly believe police will attend this can cause uncertainty and distress and may also prevent them from taking action to check on the safety of their friend or family member themselves. The investigation identified a lack of clarity within the force control room concerning whose responsibility it was to update callers when police decided not to deploy.

A further analysis of the IOPC’s recommendations to police forces, arising from investigations into deaths or serious injuries following safe and well check (also known as concern for welfare) requests, identified recurring issues with local concern for welfare policies and procedures. The IOPC has issued a significant number of recommendations to local police forces recommending they either introduce a concern for welfare policy or amend an existing concern for welfare policy to ensure that officers and staff have appropriate guidance to assist them with decision making in this area. The current College of Policing APP for safe and well checks is situated within the broader subject of mental health and does not include circumstances where there are concerns about the safety of a member of the public for other reasons, such as a physical health concern. The IOPC is aware that many police forces have recently narrowed the criteria for when they will check on a member of the public following such a request. There is no published national guidance available to police forces which defines the criteria for accepting requests from members of the public and other agencies to check the welfare of members of the public. This indicates there may be a disconnect between what the public believe the police may do in response to a concern for welfare check request, and the reality of what many forces policies and procedures stipulate. A review of the IOPC’s cases suggested common issues in the handling of concern for welfare requests. These issues could be addressed through more detailed national guidance for call centre staff and response officers on safe and well checks.

Do you accept the recommendation?

Yes

Accepted action:

The College has given a commitment to support the national implementation of Right Care Right Person (RCRP), which is a framework to ensure that a person with mental health & social care needs is responded to by the right person with the right skills, training, and experience to best meet their needs.

The RCRP approach has been supported to be rolled out nationally by the Home Secretary and has been endorsed by the NPCC Chiefs’ Council.

In supporting local delivery of the RCRP framework, the National Partnership Agreement (NPA) is currently being produced between al key stakeholders, including the NPCC, APCC, Home Office and DHSC, as a key document in setting out the priorities and delivery against the RCRP initiative.

A dedicated NPCC team led by an ACC is currently in the process of being established to develop the national implementation support function for Right Care Right Person. This includes support from the College through the development of a Smarter Practice overview of RCRP which includes a case study, and the creation of a suite of guidance modules to assist forces with their implementation. This will sit within the national toolkit framework to be hosted on the College website. The toolkit will comprise of many facets, which will include the duty of care thresholds for the police to attend incidents, partnerships and decision-making processes.

‘Right Care, Right Person’ sets out a threshold to assist police decision making in responding to incidents based on a duty of care. The benefits of this are that the police should only be responding to health & social care-based incidents where there is a clear and immediate risk of serious harm. This reduces unnecessary police involvement and ensures the public receive the right care by the right person.

The RCRP implementation is primarily focused on the triage process undertaken within the force control room, where the incident is assessed, and a decision made at that point as to whether the police will respond to the incident or not.

In cases where the decision is made that the police will not attend, this should then be immediately communicated with the caller, and where appropriate an alternative service will be signposted – to ensure the right care is provided by the right person.

The timescale for the development and publication of the National Toolkit is end of June 2023, and forces will then be supported to implement the initiative over the following 12 – 18 months, with the assistance of the NPCC RCRP Implementation Support Team.

The College is actively involved in the development of RCRP and will be updating APP across the related portfolios to ensure consistency. There will be a specific RCRP landing page hosted by the College which will in effect meet the requirements to all three recommendations as made within this case.