Police partnership to protect vulnerable members of communities in Doncaster

Chief Inspector Louise Kent met with representatives from SafeSpace in Doncaster to learn more about what services they offer and the different community provisions available for people in mental health crisis. C/I Kent also shared information on the RCRP initiative so we can ensure the right agency with the right skills are responding to mental health and welfare related incidents.

SafeSpace is a People Focused Group (PFG) that provides support to people experiencing a mental health crisis and this training created the opportunity to discuss how police can work more collectively together to protect vulnerable people and refer members of the community to their services.

Over recent years there has been an increase in police being called to support mental health and welfare related incidents, despite officers not having the training or skills to effectively support individuals. RCRP aims to address this, and we launched phases 1 and 2 in South Yorkshire earlier this year.

These phases focus specifically on concern for welfare incidents and reports of people leaving acute healthcare facilities prior to receiving treatment. Since the launch, officers have been working with partners in the health and social care sectors to embed this into ways of working and are using opportunities such as this to share knowledge and gain a greater understanding of how other services operate.

To continue building on this partnership working, next month members of the Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) will join a number of RCRP training sessions with colleagues from our Force Control Room.

These training sessions will be delivered jointly with YAS and allow SYP to discuss the day to day management of incidents, share knowledge on how it can effectively apply the principles of RCRP and identify what our individual roles and responsibilities are in mental health and welfare related incidents.

RCRP is national model introduced to improve the quality of care we provide to communities and ensure as the police it can focus on core responsibilities of crime prevention and detection. Further information on the launch of RCRP in South Yorkshire is available here. https://southyorkshire.police.uk/find-out/news-and-appeals/2023/july-2023/phase-2-of-right-care-right-person-set-to-launch-in-south-yorkshire/