Mental health incidents should be the responsibility of health personnel. Police officers should only attend if it is necessary for the safety of persons present.
That principle is about to become a reality in NSW.
NSW Premier Chris Minns and PANSW President Kevin Morton recently briefed your elected Executive representatives on the imminent changes to mental health response, the transition to a health-led model, and the alleviation of workload for police.
The impending signing of a new Memorandum of Understanding between NSWPF and NSW Health will establish that Health are the primary responsible agency, and police will only attend according to the following threshold:
Police attendance at mental health related incidents should only be requested where there is a real and imminent risk of serious harm to a person, based on a CURRENT (not historical) information about risk.
Police will not be leaving paramedics and other health staff exposed to violence and harm: police will always play a role when there is a real and imminent risk, and we will always protect our fellow emergency service workers.
But you all know, you are currently attending job after job that just does not require you to be there, and prevents you doing core police work.
Police should not be attending or performing the following work, unless that real and imminent risk threshold is met:
- Welfare checks,
- Absconded patients,
- Community treatment order breaches,
- Transport of patients
In addition, the MoU sets a standard that where police bring a person to an emergency department, the transfer of care should occur such that police can leave the emergency department within 1 hour.
Health taking over this work will alleviate workload on police: police attend approximately 70,000 mental health incidents each year (recorded on COPS) and 250,000 concern for welfare CAD jobs.
A huge volume of that work would no longer be the responsibility of police.
The Premier and all relevant Ministers are fully supportive of this reform, and NSW Health and NSW Police Force are expected to sign the MoU imminently.
These reforms will be implemented in a phased approach.
We anticipate you will see some benefit of reduced workload soon after the MoU is signed. The phased implementation will be complete by 1 July 2027, and that is when you will see the full benefits of this transition of workload.
Feel like you have heard this all before?
Some of you may say, “we have seen this all before, the 2018 MoU was supposed to implement the same principle, but we still go to more and more incidents every year.”
You are right, this principle has been an objective in previous MoUs without success.
But what makes the crucial difference this time:
Health must attend first, and only request police assistance based on CURRENT risk factors
The risk assessment must be based on CURRENT information - Requests based solely on health CAD warnings or historical warnings, without additional supporting current information, should be declined or deferred.
Unless there is current evidence of a risk to life and safety, health personnel must be the first to attend, and only based on a dynamic risk assessment can they request police assistance.
This means in the vast majority of incidents, health will attend first, and police will not attend at all, or will only attend to ensure health personnel safety when a dynamic risk assessment requires police attendance.
Health have been given the responsibility and funding to do this work
The new MoU is the most clear and definitive wording of NSW Health’s responsibility to do this work, and the unambiguous ability for police to decline to attend these incidents.
Again, you may rightly say: but if no one goes, in the end we get called.
You have probably all experienced the pressure of knowing no ambulance is available to attend a mental health request, and so being the universal problems solvers that you are, you decide to go to make sure someone is there to help a person in crisis.
But this time, the NSW Government has announced funding and resources for NSW Health to attend these jobs.
Health resources including counselling, local mental health services, or the new specialist Mental Health Acute Assessment Team within NSW Ambulance.
The greater range of health personnel that can resolve these incidents mean that often, paramedics will also not be required to attend, and therefore avoids their lack of availability flowing on to police.
In addition, a Statewide Virtual Mental Health Hub within NSW Ambulance will enable the resolution of incidents with less physical attendance by an ambulance, or a police officer.
The formation of eight Mental Health Acute Assessment Teams is also a significant increase to health resources to do this work, although we do note their hours of operation being 12 hours per day, 7 days per week, will still create pressure where incidents are unresolved outside of those hours.
Dispute resolution and oversight
What is written on the page of a policy and what happens in the field can always have differences.
We understand it is all well and good for the policy to be improved, but if you are still getting called to jobs that no one else will attend, you don’t see the benefit of that reform.
During the transition of this work, there will be hyper-vigilance by NSW Government, NSWPF and NSW Health that the intent of this reform is actually being implemented.
There are also live resolution processes to ensure that problems can be resolved quickly, rather than waiting for an oversight committee to review it.
If you are still required to attend jobs you know you shouldn’t be, make sure that resolution process is utilised, and that the Mental Health Contact Officer in your Command is aware.