Public Servant Lifestyle

A Northumbria Police sergeant's idea to improve police response to people with mental health difficulties has won a Queen's Award for Innovation. If Sgt. Jon Dowd's work fulfils its promise, it's hoped officers nationwide will receive comprehensive and structured training to help people displaying mental health difficulties.

His research shows that, after training, the time taken to deal with each mental health incident fell by 20 minutes - around 4,900 officer hours a year in Northumbria. Trained officers also showed a 55% improvement in their ability to risk assess a situation, an area particularly important for firearms officers and hostage negotiators.

It all began in 2000 when Sgt. Dowd began low key training for officers in Whitley Bay which led to a noticeable drop in the number of calls linked to issues surrounding mental health.

He began a PhD based on mental health training and found that while this was limited to probationer level in British policing, in America many forces delivered mental health training.

Sgt. Dowd designed and piloted a questionnaire in Northumbria, sending an additional questionnaire around policing issues and mental health to 200 American patrol officers – 98% of those surveyed said training was vital. All Northumbria officers surveyed said they felt training would be beneficial.

He began working on the project full time, pushing the project at a national level with the support of MIND, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), the Alzheimer's Society, the Police Complaints Authority, The Princess Royal Trust for Carers and the Zito Trust.

A pilot course involving 28 Northumbria officers, including 20 area command officers, five firearms officers and three force negotiators, covered areas such as mental health legislation, suicide, self-harm prevention, personality disorders and anger management.

The £15,000 award, which will be used for training the force firearms officers and hostage negotiators, was won based on research evaluation of this pilot course by Forensic Psychologist Dr Shaun Parsons of Newcastle University.

Sgt. Dowd said: "This is the first time Northumbria Police has been nominated and won the Queen's Award for Innovation in Police Training and Development. There are only three given in the UK each year and it's a great honour. This award was given because of research evaluation which clearly shows mental health training works and does have a positive effect. It's all about awareness. No one situation is ever the same and you cannot say because a person has a particular difficulty they will act in a certain way."

Research and evaluation will continue and training is expected to be delivered at the end of the year.

More information available in Education & Training, Incentives & Rewards