A LACK of provision for people with mental health problems means that policing has to pick up the pieces, the Chair of Thames Valley Police Federation has said – adding that the Government needs to address the situation urgently.
A Government report from 2018 that has just come to light found that up to 4,500 people in mental health crisis were ‘unlawfully held in police custody’ in England and Wales in a year.
Federation Chair Craig O’Leary said that police stations were not the right place for these vulnerable people and that the Government had to fund more support for social care.
He said: “We’ve talked about this endlessly over the years and here we are still talking about it. Yet again it’s another failure for this Government in terms of its community health and social care programme.
Mental health provision has been severely lacking and under-funded for decades and the police station is yet again the only place of safety in some circumstances for these individuals. It’s not right. A police station is not the right place.
They need to be in a medical establishment where they can be looked after and treated for their mental illness. Sadly there’s just a severe lack of provision in this area. Policing is the stop-gap for everything. All of society’s failings and other agencies’ failings, sadly, are picked up by the police.
This is a really sad failing. It’s 2021. How can we not, in today’s society, have enough mental health establishments, treatment centres, that can look after some very vulnerable people? They should not be sat in police cells, it’s as simple as that. The government needs to address it, it needs to be addressed with funding”.
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