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Right Care Right Person (RCRP) is a system that changes the way emergency services respond to medical calls. It's designed to ensure that vulnerable people receive the right specialist health support they need.
While some health incidents do require our attendance, there are many in which there is no safety risk or crime committed. In these cases, our partners in health or social care would be best placed to offer this support.
When speaking to those who have experienced mental health crisis, including those who have been under 136 mental health detention, service users say they did not want to see a police officer. In fact, they found it traumatic.
Police involvement with someone who is in mental health crisis can have a further detrimental impact on them and make them feel like they have done something wrong, rather than being someone who is ill and requires help and support.
RCRP, first developed by Humberside Police, involves the police working with partner agencies to identify the most appropriate agency to give vulnerable people the care and support they need.
Nationally, estimates show that implementing the principles of RCRP could save around one million police officer hours each year. This means frontline officers will be able to spend more time preventing crime, protecting our communities and bringing offenders to justice.
We began work to introduce RCRP in spring 2024.
This involves working closely with partners in health, social care and the charity sector to ensure we continue to prioritise the welfare of vulnerable people.
Our duty is to protect our communities and we will always attend where there is a threat to life, or someone is in danger. In some situations, a police officer may not be the most appropriate person to attend an incident as the victim may be better looked after by a different agency or professional with specialist skills and expertise.
The RCRP approach is based on a model developed by Humberside Police in 2021. It has also been implemented by other forces, including Lancashire Police, South Yorkshire Police, North Yorkshire Police and more recently the Metropolitan Police.
Our call handlers are specially trained to deal with a wide range of calls and to fully assess each one based on threat, harm and risk to determine if police should attend or whether another response is more appropriate.
If the call handler decides that police officers should not attend and you are unhappy with this, you can request that the decision is reviewed by a supervisor. Further details are provided under ‘If you’re unhappy with a decision’.
The implementation of RCRP will not stop us from continuing to perform our key role of keeping people safe, but we will be working with partners to ensure the most appropriate agency with the correct training and experience in managing mental health issues responds.
We are not stepping away from health-related incidents, as we still have a duty to protect our communities and will always attend incidents where there is a threat to life or serious harm to an individual or others around them.
In England and Wales, police receive more than 300,000 reports of missing people each year. These incidents vary considerably, and officers will use all available information to determine levels of risk and whether a police response is required. This assessment ensures those most at risk are identified and prioritised.
Some individuals who are reported missing are patients who have left hospital without being formally discharged and it is not always the case that they should be treated as a missing person by the police. In October 2020, the Missing Adults from Health and Care Settings framework was published to assist police officers in making these decisions.
Following a full risk assessment, if the decision is that police officers will not be attending because we are not the most appropriate agency to support you, the reasons will be clearly explained.
You will then be signposted to the most appropriate agency to help you.
Our duty is to protect our communities and we will always attend where there is a threat to life, or someone is in danger. In some situations, a police officer may not be the most appropriate person to attend as the victim may be better looked after by a different agency or professional with specialist skills and expertise.
Research from other forces across the country has shown little to no change on pressures and there is no evidence that RCRP has added any strain on local NHS trusts.
Humberside Police has evaluated the impacts of RCRP on their force and reported a more collaborative, informed, and appropriate response to incidents involving a health or social care need.
The RCRP model in Humberside was applied to broader categories of incidents than the focus on mental health set out in the NPA. The evaluation showed a large reduction in the deployment of police resources to these incidents between January 2019 and October 2022. This has allowed the force to reallocate saved resource to specialist teams such as missing persons.
If you are struggling with your mental health and need support or advice please visit the NHS Mental health support for adults in Hertfordshire web page (opens in a new window) or call NHS 111 and select option 2 to be connected to a mental health professional.
If you're unhappy about a police decision not to attend an incident, you can request that it is reviewed by a supervisor in our control room. This is known as an 'escalation process'. It is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week by asking the call handler to escalate the decision to a supervisor for review.
Depending on demand there may be a delay to the review being carried out. However, you will be provided with a reference number (called an ISR number) and a call handler will contact you with an update.
Chief Constable Charlie Hall said: “Police are not always the most appropriate agency to respond, especially when someone is in mental health crisis and a police officer attending can actually make the individual’s experience more traumatic. We are committed to ensuring that you, the public we serve, receive the right care from the right agency.
“Some mental health incidents do require police attendance, but many do not and while police officers are compassionate and highly skilled, they are not trained to deliver mental health care. Responding to these calls also takes frontline officers away from their core duties of keeping people safe and preventing crime.
“The RCRP approach will mean police can focus on attending health incidents where there is a significant safety risk or crime being committed and refer incidents outside of this to the most appropriate partner agency."
Dr Jane Halpin, Chief Executive of Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care Board, said: “Ensuring that people experiencing a mental health crisis receive the care they need quickly, is vital to helping them make a good recovery.
"Everyone in a crisis deserves to have support delivered compassionately by those who are most appropriately skilled and trained to provide it."
The implementation of RCRP in Herts is being carefully planned with partners to keep everybody safe and provide the best possible service.