\n Chief Superintendent Rhona Fraser said progress had been made in directing callers towards appropriate care, but admitted police were not always the right service to deal with the vulnerabilities involved.\n<\/p>\n
\n The issue was raised at Inverclyde Council\u2019s police and fire scrutiny panel by Councillor Robert Moran, who recalled hearing about the scale of mental health-related demand during an earlier visit to a police call centre.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: \u201cThe Chief Constable said to us they\u2019ll never refuse a phone call and they\u2019ll never refuse help.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cBut to me it seems we haven\u2019t moved on since then, there\u2019s not anything specific saying \u2018from now on this will happen\u2019.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI\u2019d like to see something happening in that department, so we really do concentrate police\u2019s time on police work and not dealing with the rest of it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Responding to the concerns, Chief Superintendent Fraser said work had been undertaken to assess calls and connect people with suitable support.\n<\/p>\n
\n However, she acknowledged that further progress was required.\n<\/p>\n
\n (Image: Police Scotland)\n<\/p>\n
\n She said: \u201cThere have been inroads and progress made, in terms of triaging calls and making sure that individuals get the right care that they deserve.\n<\/p>\n
\n “However, I think the Chief Constable has been quite clear we have a long way still to go.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cA high percentage of our time is spent responding to calls from people in mental health crisis.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Often we are the most suitable service when there\u2019s a threat to life, and of course we will immediately respond and help out in those circumstances, but sometimes we\u2019re not.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have the training. We don\u2019t have the skillset to best deal with the person with the vulnerability that\u2019s presenting to us.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThere is a bit of work still to be done. There are a number of partners around the table to discuss that.”\n<\/p>\n
\n The police chief said officers would continue to respond immediately when a person\u2019s life was believed to be at risk.\n<\/p>\n
\n However, her comments highlighted the continuing pressure placed on frontline policing by incidents in which specialist health or care support may be more appropriate.\n<\/p>\n
\n Councillor Moran said police were doing a ‘fantastic job’, but argued that greater assistance from health partners could reduce demand on officers and help ensure vulnerable callers spoke to people with the appropriate expertise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chief Superintendent Rhona Fraser said progress had been made in directing callers towards appropriate care, but admitted police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-634336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}