Wednesday 23 August 2023
In July a national partnership agreement was announced to improve the way emergency calls relating to mental health incidents are dealt with. The new approach, known as ‘Right Care, Right Person’ (RCRP), aims to “end the inappropriate and avoidable involvement of police” in responding to such incidents across England and Wales.
Crest’s Analysts Ellen Kirk and Greg O’Meara have today published a blog examining the aims and success factors for the RCRP model on the Crest website. As part of this, they discuss the estimation of police time that the NPCC say could be saved through the effective implementation of the RCRP model. This is based on scaling up the model applied in Humberside exactly and based on the demand seen in that individual force area.
The NPCC and College of Policing have published guidance on the implementation of RCRP locally. The first step for forces in implementing RCRP is understanding the local landscape and current demand profile.
Crest, in partnership with Justice Episteme, has developed a bespoke police demand methodology which is now applied in five forces across England and Wales. Understanding the characteristics of demand and the average time spent deploying staff to attend different types of incidents is a core functionality of the user-friendly and interactive tool provided to forces. A scenario modelling component also enables forces to test run a change to policy/process to estimate the impact of that change on resource hours required.
The Poliscope team is well set up to provide analysis for forces on current levels of demand from mental health related incidents, and can also provide an interactive scenario modelling tool to test the impact of differing levels of deployment to relevant incidents, as well as assumptions around repeat caller or failure demand.
Forces are also provided with a third facet - which maps police-recorded incidents geographically, overlaid with mental health and deprivation data that is available publicly.
This approach allows forces to gain an in-depth understanding of current and future demand, and provides a robust evidence base to facilitate strategic planning discussions internally as well as providing a basis for discussion with health partners and third sector organisations. It also facilitates the evaluation of RCRP as set out in the guidance by the College of Policing.
If you’re interested in commissioning a bespoke Poliscope RCRP tool for your force please get in touch with ellie@poliscope.org.uk.