Supporting Staff: GMP Research Initiative Focussing on Understanding Absenteeism Linked

Supporting staff: GMP Research Initiative Focussing on Understanding Absenteeism Linked to Psychological Illness

Researcher: Police Constable Adele Owen , Tactical Mental Health Lead, Greater Manchester Police ()

Supervisor: Christine Horrocks – Acting Dean of the Faculty of Health, Psychology & Social Care & Professor of Applied Social Psychology ()

Opening statement

This research was initiated and completed as a result of the Greater Manchester Police/ Manchester Metropolitan University Fellowship Programme, funded by the College of Policing - Innovation Capacity Building Fund.

Many thanks go to Professor Christine Horrocks for all the support, patience and encouragement she gave me throughout this Fellowship.

Background

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has, and is, experiencing a rising trend in sickness absence with sickness levels for 2013/2014 ending 25.1% over target and 47.5% over target for 2014-2015. This 20% increase in 2014/2015 figures accounted for 30,766 days lost to sickness. GMP sees the equivalent of an entire Division of staff off each day (average of just over 460 staff). The financial cost to GMP of this level of sickness is in excess of £17 million per year (based on the average salary of a police constable).

Stress, anxiety and/or depression, categorised as ‘psychological Illness’ (one of the Dorset 12 categories) by the organisation, is now the main reason for long term sickness absence and one of the three main reasons for absence generally. It accounts for 27.8% of all sickness.

Data showing the number of officers signed off with psychological disorders across the police service nationally, published in the Police Oracle article ‘Policing and the true scale of mental health issues’ by Sarah Ingram, (5th September 2014), revealed that GMP was second only to the Metropolitan Police Service for the 2014 calendar year. This comes at a time when there have been reductions in staff within Occupational Health & Welfare Units nationally.

As a police officer within Greater Manchester Police, I am professionallyconcerned with improving how the police service responds operationally to incidents involving mental ill health in our communities. However, I am also aware that policepersonnel are not immune to mental ill health so I was extremely grateful to have the opportunity to research how GMP can support its own staff within the workforce who experience anxiety, stress and/or depression.

One in four people are believed to be personally affected by mental ill health each year, according to the mental health charity Mind,but they also believe that these statistics are even higher for emergency service workers. The topic of this research therefore seems very relevant within this wider context.

The impact of economic austerity on policing

We are currently living in a long period of economic austerity. Police personnel are affected by this in both their personal and professional lives. Professionally, they are responding to those within communities who have been impacted by economic austerity while they themselves face challenges in their own workplace as a result of changes to their pay and conditions and on-going organisational change programmes making police forces more ‘fit for the future’. These also have an impact on staff wellbeing. Amy Raynor and Superintendent Phil Davies of GMP produced a topic report dated the 17th June 2014 stating that ‘the direct effect of some change programmes has been a reduction in resources which have not necessarily been met with a reduction in demands- resulting in higher workloads. Some staff and managers state they are experiencing change exhaustion and many police staff report continuous uncertainty around their job security and future employment with GMP’. Furthermore, with a national reduction of around 16,000 police officers since 2010, due impart to the impact of austerity on the police service, many staff are now responsible for roles that used to be completed by more than one person. A reality which will only increase as the Greater Manchester Police workforce reduces from 8000 to 6000 and beyond, in the forthcoming years.

Sickness and absenteeism

Sickness absence is placing a huge strain on the organisation and there is now an acknowledgement that the wellbeing of staff needs to be prioritised. Steps are being taken to ensure that support for staff is available to help them cope with the demands placed upon them, helping them to increase their resilience and improve their overall wellbeing.

A Strategic Attendance Management Project was commissioned bythe recently retiredChief Constable Sir Peter Fahy, which supported the Chief’s Vision and the Public Sector Reform Agenda requiring public sector workers and leaders to behave and think differently using professional discretion and making value based leadership decisions. The project compliments the Force Wellbeing Agenda and the Fit for the Future Portfolio and is aimed at being intelligence led and data driven based on independent analysis conducted by the London School of Economics and Manchester Business School’s Big Data Project. The Big Data Project has gathered a large amount of quantative research data on absenteeism within GMP and the recent GMP Staff Wellbeing Survey also feeds into the findings of the Big Data Project.

Review of relevant literature

Inspector Michael Brown of West Midlands Police stated in his ‘Mental Health Cop’ blog entry entitled ‘Police Mental Health’ (May 2nd 2013, URL: that ‘policing is a profession, especially at the moment, which is ripe for a combination of professional and personal factors which produces a higher than average likelihood that some staff will experience mental distress, just at a point when the organisation is less likely to be able to directly support and where supervisors may not necessarily feel confident in discussing it. All taken together, it has obvious potential to build towards stress; anxiety and inertia that could become a mental health emergency somewhere down the line’.

In addition to the personal costs to the member of staff and their families of ‘psychological illness’, are the costs to the organisation itself and its capability of meeting the expectations within the Police and Crime Plan 2013-2016 and beyond.

Within Greater Manchester Police there are many members of staff carrying out a variety of different roles which place varying demands and expectations on the staff involved. In 2013/2014, a psychosocial risk assessment study of Custody Sergeants in England and Wales was carried out by Dr. Jonathan Houdmont. Forty one responses were provided by GMP staff to an online survey and 59% of GMP respondents were identified as presenting with a case of work related stress. Across the 42 forces, 39% of respondents were identified as presenting with the same, the average for the UK workforce being 16% (from the 2010 HSE figures). The survey found that 59% of the GMP respondents scored above the threshold for a degree of psychological distress (anxiety and depression) that would be likely to result in a diagnosis of a minor psychiatric disorder at a clinical interview. This is believed to be usually just found in 20% of the general working population when this measurement instrument is used in national surveys. 76% of GMP respondents scored above the threshold for high burnout (emotional exhaustion) compared to 60% of the respondents across the 42 forces who responded. Emotional exhaustion could have “negative long term consequences”, stated Dr. Houmont (Caswell: 2014).

Research conducted with GMP staff in the Public Protection Department (PPD), entitled ‘Examining Police Resilience using the Stress Shield Model’ (2012: 35-36), identified certain aspects of the staff’s working day during the analysis of data, that may be harmful to their well-being. The research quotes Richard Lazarus who suggested in ‘Psychological Stress and the Coping Process’ (1966), that ‘daily hassles’ are better indicators of poor mental health than significant life events…The persistent occurrence of irritating and unrealistic demands from the working day have been recognised to “wear down” individuals and are detrimental to their coping capacity.

Research on psychological illness experienced by police staff and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) in the UK is lacking but American research highlighted the need for the recognition of the different factors contributing to psychological illness in both police staff and police officers (McCarty: 2012). The successful implementation of policing services in Greater Manchester is reliant on the performance of all staff within GMP and this research includes police officers, PCSO’s and police staff within the organisation and has recognised specific issues associated to the roles held.

Aims and objectives for the research

This research aimed to provide important additionalinsight from staff with experience of psychological illness, which will support the efforts being made by GMP to ensure a more resilient workforce for the future.

The objectives of the research were to:

1)Exploring current Attendance and Sickness Management policies for staff, with particular focus on psychological illness.

2)Review the current support offered to staff with psychological illness.

3)Explore the decision making processes of staff who report sick with psychological illness, and

4)Finally, to identify what support staff within GMP, experiencing psychological illness, would find beneficial to help them remain in the workplace and improve their wellbeing.

Research methods and methodology

Initially, it was intended to carry out a quantative survey with police officers and PCSO’s across the force prior to qualitative research in the form of focus groups and one to one interviews taking place but this had to be reconsidered in light of the timeframes of the Fellowship and the on-going research by the LSE. It was agreed that the findings from the qualitative interviews could potentially be of benefit to the LSE research when planning the quantative research questions for their further research on sickness and GMP asked for the research to include police staff to take this future research into account.

While statistics play an important role in policing, this research sought to find out what people’s individual experiences were when experiencing psychological illness within the organisation and their thoughts and perceptions about those specific experiences.

As a consequence, the research consisted of two phases of qualitative research.

• The first phase involved focus groups for police officers, Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) and police staff who had experience of psychological illness while serving within GMP.
• The second phase involved one to one interviews with supervisors who had personal experience of psychological illness and/or had managed a member of staff who was experiencing psychological illness.

Ethical Approval

The research study received ethical approval from Manchester Metropolitan University’s, Ethics Committee and from Greater Manchester Police. Written consent was obtained from each participant prior to interviews and focus groups taking place.

Description of the ‘field site’

When the research proposalwas initially submitted, concern was expressed by a Greater Manchester Police senior officer, that there would be a lack of interview participants willing to take part due to the subject matter being focused on mental ill health and secondly, because the ‘field site’ for the research was a police organisation- the second largest police service in England and Wales.

The presumption was that stigma about mental ill health would mean potential participants would be reluctant to volunteer. Mental Health stigma is a recognised issue within society generally and there are national campaigns running to address this, such as the work of the charity Time to Change. A police service takes its personnel from this very society. Police officers respond to a wide variety of requests for assistance on a daily basis, including mental distress, and they are expected to act without hesitation, providing support and managing situations to a resolution-in fact, they are often legislatively obliged to act and can potentially face criminal charges if they failed to do so. There is an expectation from the public, and the police service itself, that the officers attending an incident will be mentally strong enough to deal with what is before them. There is the perception by many officers themselves that to be anything but ‘strong’ is a sign of weakness and the perceived question that follows to many is, ‘Is there a place for weakness in a police service?’.

It is generally recognised that men in society find it more difficult to acknowledge that they may be affected by mental ill health and seek help early. In addition, the perception of mental ill health being a ‘weakness’ will often link in to their perceptions of what being a ‘man’ is, so it had to be acknowledged that this could be considered an issue when there are more male than female police officers in Greater Manchester Police, as in all national forces.

Another factor that had to be accounted for was that the researcher was a serving police officer,with almost 20 years’ service, within the same organisation- an ‘insider researcher’. Would colleagues be prepared to talk about very difficult times in their lives with a police colleague?

As an insider researcher, the trust of potential research volunteers had to be earned by highlighting in the advertisements that the research would be confidential, anonymised and that it had been ethically approved by the Ethics Committee at Manchester Metropolitan University. It was also felt important that the image in the advertisement asking for participants was a positive one and didn’t follow the usual line frequently portrayed of a person with their head in their hands in utmost despair.

Though GMP personnel are part of one organisation, there are unique differences to many roles held. A decision was made, as the researcher, not to wear police uniform when interviews were conducted to avoid the perception of being an ‘outsider’ by police staff, PCSO’s or more senior officers- avoiding some of the perceived power dynamics that could run either way. But this could only go so far, as the organisational expectation is to refer to senior officers as ‘Sir’ or ‘Ma’am’. This power/influence dynamic could have been problematic but in reality it didn’t appear to be an issue during this study.

Plans were made to hold focus groups away from police premises that were operational -choosing quieter but comfortable areas of the police training school- locations everyone could have had cause to visit. The welfare of participants was of paramount importance. Support information was made available to participants that may have required it after the research interview had taken place. It was also considered important and a moral responsibility to ensure that participants left the interviews in a positive frame of mind. It was an important factor from the start that this form of social research was ethically conducted.

So, the research was begun in the hope that a sufficient number of volunteer participants would come forward willing to speak, confidentially, about their own experience of mental ill health while serving in GMP.

Representation and Participants

After the advertisement was circulated and an intranet announcement made, asking for volunteers for the research,the unanticipated positive response was a little overwhelming, with over one hundred members of staff making contact during the two week volunteer window. Though it created logistical issues for the research, the level of participation offered emphasised that the research topic was very relevant to many in the organisation.

Qualitative interviews

• An obligation was felt to speak to as many volunteer participants as possible to acknowledge the fact that they had offered to speak to a researcher (a stranger to many but a colleague all the same), about what was a very difficult period in their lives which many still hadn’t shared with colleagues they worked with on a daily basis.
• For a handful of staff, they even shared the steps they had taken to end their lives before they accessed support- for some this had occurred whilst they were on duty. (A plan was in place to contain distress and respond to immediate concerns that may have been revealed for the welfare of an individual but it never needed to be utilised).
• Due to the time constraints of the research,which was carried out in addition to an operational policing role,and, as a result, on many occasions, of conflicting diary commitments, it was not possible to carry out all the face to face interviews intended though fifty three staff were interviewed.
• As an alternative solution, the remaining participants were offered the opportunity of a phone interview. This method was not considered ideal for such a research topic, and only five participants accepted the offer but it assisted in confirming if themes identified at that stage were an issue for other participants. It also, and more importantly, gave acknowledgement to participantsthat had been prepared to share their own experiences, that their ‘voice’ was important
• At the end of a number of interviews, participants actually expressed gratitude. For some staff, sharing their stories appeared to involve more for them than participating in a piece of research, it was an opportunity to talk about their experiences to someone who wanted to hear and listened and, in addition, they appreciated that the interviewee wasn’t coming from a perceived position of judgement as there was a shared experience ofhaving lived with mental ill health.

Focus Groups