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Mental Health Emergency? You Now Won’t Be Able to Call 999
From September, police officers will only attend mental health 999 calls where there is an ‘immediate threat to life’.
The move has been described by a former inspector of constabulary as ‘potentially alarming’, while the Royal College of Psychiatrists have called the move ‘unhelpful’. The Met argues the move will free up officers who are being used more and more often as a first resort for people in a crisis.
The plans, which were first reported by The Guardian, were laid out in a letter written by Metropolitan’s police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley to health and social care services in Greater London.
According to Rowley, it takes almost 23 hours on average from the point at which someone is detained under the Mental Health Act until they are handed into medical care. He also goes on to explain that his officers are spending more than 10,000 hours a month on ‘what is principally a health matter’.
Earlier in the year, Rowley told BBC Newsnight that the hours it takes policing mental health is equivalent to dealing with 500,000 victims of domestic abuse. In one example, Met officers spent 30 hours supervising one individual as they were unable to find space at a mental health unit.
‘This isn’t what [police officers] are trained to do, they’re the wrong people to be doing it, we’re letting vulnerable people down,’ he added.
With mental health services under funded, understaffed and over worked, it begs the question: who are you supposed to call?
According to Zoe Billingham, who was previously Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue and is now chair of the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS mental health trust, believes other than the police force, there is simply no other agency to call, warning ‘there isn’t another agency to step in and fill the vacuum.’
While the announcement has been welcomed by some, and it’s widely understood that the police won’t withdraw completely, Ms Billingham has expressed doubt about whether the timeframe set by the Met is achievable and would be ‘very surprised’ if mental health trusts across London are able to get extra round-the-clock services staffed and working efficiently.
Dr Adrian James, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, told the BBC that the move is unhelpful. ‘We don’t have those resources at the current time,’ he said. ‘We also have a workforce crisis in the health service. We can’t just pluck new members of staff from nowhere. I think it’s too short a period of time. Sir Mark should look very closely at whether there is some flexibility around that.’
In 2020, Humberside police brought in a policy known as Right Care, Right Person (RCRP), that involves staff from the charity Mind dealing with calls in the police room. According to a report by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Service, it saved over a thousand hours of police time per month. And this is what Rowley is hoping to introduce by the end of August.
‘It is important to stress the urgency of implementing RCRP in London,’ says Rowley. ‘We are failing them first by sending police officers, not medical professionals, to those in mental health crisis, and expecting them to do their best in circumstances where they are not the right people to be dealing with the patient.
‘We are failing Londoners a second time by taking large amounts of officer time away from preventing and solving crime, as well as dealing properly with victims, in order to fill gaps for others.’
Comment From MH’s Executive Editor, Robert Hicks
As someone who has had to deal with a mental health emergency, I can say first-hand that mental health services are struggling to deal with such situations – and that’s with police help. At weekends, you can be expected to be put on hold – I was number eight in the queue and had to wait almost an hour to speak to someone. While the mental health services undoubtedly work very hard, in my experience, they are being stretched beyond their capabilities. Mental health is a very serious matter both for the person who is experiencing it and those trying to care for that person. While the idea is right in principle, I'm sceptical this can be implemented by September.
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