Contemporary debriefing A new model for managing post trauma support within the police

Senior counsellor Judith Sullivan explains how the need to support the colleagues of two Leicestershire Constabulary officers who died while on duty has led to a new approach for managing post trauma support within the service.

Modern day policing presents great challenges to forces in the management and development of effective post trauma support for staff. In these days of increasing exposure of police officers and staff to incidents of a traumatic nature, the organisational duty of care is more important than ever.

Meeting these challenges and ensuring effective processes are in place and tailored to specific organisational needs is essential. Indeed, as part of the Strategy for a Healthy Police Service published in 2002, the then Home Office Minister for Police, John Denham stated in Section 21.b (Support for Staff in Posts subject to Intense or Long Term Stress): ‘…every force will assess which posts place staff under intense or long term stress and ensure that a psychological support service is available to staff in these posts.’

Understandably, this presents a challenge to the employing organisation as to how this support can effectively be offered. Many forces, including Leicestershire, offer a system of routinely scheduled proactive ‘psychological support’ or ‘clinical supervision’ sessions for those involved in long term, high-risk roles.

Offering this service provision presents a twofold challenge; firstly, finding a format for these sessions which is perceived as acceptable and worthwhile rather than intrusive and something to be avoided, and secondly, identifying which roles should be designated as ‘high risk’. The former is the task for a skilled police counsellor or welfare advisor, the latter may prove to be more of a challenge as arguably almost all roles within policing, as in many other large organisations, could be deemed to be stressful.

In terms of offering support for what John Denham terms ‘intense stress’, it is reasonable to assume that this definition refers to those who have been involved in, or have closely witnessed, a traumatic or critical incident. For an organisation to fulfil its duty of care to members of staff it must comply with Health and Safety and Work Regulations (1999) and ensure that the trauma support provision is ethical, based on latest recommendations and research findings, and most of all, is deemed to be culturally appropriate and effective.

There is a great deal of literature available on the subject of trauma support, dating back to references in the writings of Shakespeare, Homer and Dickens where characters exhibit symptoms congruent with what is now termed Post Traumatic Stress. Doctors working in both world wars identified distinctive reactions following traumatic experiences, and informal recounting of events or story-telling by those who had experienced a disaster became more commonplace.

This appears to have been an attempt to mitigate the stressful symptoms often experienced following a trauma. As the therapeutic effect of this process was recognised, it evolved over the last century into a more formal process of ‘critical incident stress debriefing’ or ‘psychological debriefing’. This type of post trauma support remains in wide use today, and is prevalent in many police forces.

Despite this prevalence, there are few police-specific texts which inform the nature of the process on response to trauma. In order ‘to assist the police organisation in the effective management of risk, by fulfilling its legislative and moral duty of care to personnel who are exposed to work-related incidents by which they may be traumatised’, the National Association for Police Welfare Advisors (NAPWA) issued a Trauma Support Good Practice Guideline in 1996, which was updated in 2004.

This document provides both background and recommendations for the management and delivery of ‘defusings’ (the initial supportive intervention offered immediately after an incident) and debriefings. The guidelines also att