Policing’s Well-Being Problem: Stigma, Isolation And The Retention Crisis

The following transcript was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies. Paul: Welcome to today’s Forensic Focus podcast. Today I’ve invited Dr Sarah-Jane Lennie from Anglia Ruskin University. Sarah-Jane, could you introduce yourself? Dr Lennie: Hello, and thank you very much for inviting me — it’s an absolute pleasure. I’m Sarah-Jane Lennie, and most people know me as SJ. I’m an Associate Professor at the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Uniformed Public Services at Anglia Ruskin University. I’m an organisational psychologist, and my research focus is the mental health and wellbeing of police officers and staff, and also their families. Paul: It’s interesting that you include families, because that’s such an under-researched area — I’m talking about the vicarious trauma suffered by families as a result of what investigators go through themselves. Dr Lennie: Absolutely. I was really lucky to do a piece of funded research from the College of Policing — the National Police Wellbeing Service. They commissioned a piece of research looking at the wellbeing needs of police families, based on the Police Covenant. When we started, as you said, it was a completely under-researched area. There’s a lot of international research looking at families of law enforcement officers, but pretty much nothing in the UK. So it was a really groundbreaking piece of work. As you rightly said, the vicarious trauma experienced by families and the impact on them is significant. As I say in my research, we owe families a debt of gratitude for supporting police officers, staff and the organisation to do what it does. Get The Latest DFIR News Join the Forensic Focus newsletter for the best DFIR articles in your inbox every month. Unsubscribe any time. We respect your privacy - read our privacy policy. Paul: Speaking from my experience, I know the toll it took on my own family. I’ve written an article for Forensic Focus about that, co-written with my wife. The more research done in that area, the better — it’s drastically needed. Dr Lennie: I completely agree. I can relate as well, because I’m a child of two police officers. Not only was my father a police officer, but I’m also married to a now-retired police officer. I completely understand that. I’d always wondered about it, but it was quite cathartic and therapeutic to hear people’s experiences reflecting mine — and quite humbling too, the impact it has on the family. Paul: It’s interesting that you mention your policing background, because that leads nicely into the next question. You began your career in policing before moving into academia to research this area. What motivated that? Dr Lennie: Yes, I was a police officer for 16 or 17 years. I first joined the Army straight after leaving school after my A Levels. I really enjoyed that, but I wanted to go into something more frontline — as a woman, you couldn’t be frontline in the military in those days. So I joined the police service, and obviously my parents were police officers, so it felt really familiar. I’ll be honest with you, I absolutely loved policing. It really was my raison d’être. I loved everything I got to do. It’s just a fabulous place to be. I was in Hampshire Constabulary first — I think I did 10 years with Hampshire, because I was based down south when I was in the Army. I left, went back to university, then joined Hampshire Constabulary. Then I moved up north and joined Greater Manchester Police, because I’m actually a Northerner. It was wonderful, but I really struggled with my mental health in the end. I was a DI in Wythenshawe, and I started struggling — not that I understood it at the time. I wasn’t sleeping. I was regularly working 26-plus hours. My husband would say that when I was at home, I wasn’t present. What I was doing was thinking about all my investigations and everything happening within the division I was in charge of — intelligence, as well as MAPPA. I was constantly checking: have I done everything, gone through my intelligence, dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s? Really stressful, anxious overthinking. I’ve since learned from speaking to neuroscientists that I was fragmenting my brain because there were so many threats I was dealing with — my brain was trying to cope with them all at once. It got to a point where I realised one morning that I didn’t have enough space in my brain to literally get out of bed and clean my teeth. I recognised then that I had a decision to make between my own mental health and my career. I felt that if I went in and said, “Look, I’m not coping, I’m struggling,” my career would be on the scrap heap. I should mention I was on the HPDS at that point, so I was also studying, doing my PG Dip. But I had to make that decision. I went in and said, “I’m really struggling — can I step away from my role? Can I go back to uniform? Is there anything I can do?” It was one Superintendent who called me in and said, “Look, what makes you think you can make it in uniform if you can’t make it in CID?” At that point I just thought, “That’s it — my career’s done. I’ve exposed myself, I’m not coping, I’m weak.” All of the things that you think. So I made the decision to go back to academia. At that point, when I had nothing to lose, I started speaking to people I was supervising, to my peers, to my seniors. I told them exactly what I’d been experiencing, and to a greater or lesser extent, they started reflecting those experiences back to me. That’s when I realised this wasn’t just a me thing — that everybody was going around with some sort of struggle but was silent about it. We didn’t talk about it, we were hiding it, masking those experiences. To be honest with you, it really peed me off. I got quite angry about it. So when I went back to university — I had no idea what I was going to do — this is what I started researching. This led me onto my PhD, where I looked at emotional inauthenticity: the culture of silencing and masking our emotions, using emotional labour as a theory, and looking at how that impacted individual psychological outcomes. I found this really high dissociative behaviour happening in policing that was a consequence of the culture but also an ask of policing. That’s how they want people to be: stoic, hiding their emotions, masking their experiences, displaying that they aren’t bothered by the experiences they have. That’s where my passion comes from for this project, because I think police officers and their families deserve so much better. Their job is so difficult — they deserve a better quality of life. Paul: What you’ve just shared is really important. You’ve described the sheer impact that policing can have when you’re working on the inside. You came home and were still thinking about work — you couldn’t switch off from it. Dr Lennie: Absolutely. Paul: You were constantly evaluating what investigation you had. You didn’t have time to decompress. Dr Lennie: Absolutely. Paul: And the other important point you shared is that when you did go back into work and looked for suitable accommodation — a change in role to reduce that — all you were met with was, to use your words, “What makes you think you’ll make it in uniform?” Dr Lennie: Yes. To be honest, there were a couple of people who were supportive and tried to help me. But in general, that’s what was literally said to me: “What makes you think you’ll make it in uniform?” I’d already anticipated that response — that my lifelong career of being a police officer was over. Paul: I’m sure I don’t have to tell someone in your position, but that information is absolutely evident in the empirical research out there right now. It all talks about taking the job home, not being able to be present with the family — even though physically you are, mentally and emotionally you’re not. It also talks in detail about the lack of support and the stigma around help-seeking behaviour in policing, which is absolutely still abundant. Dr Lennie: You’re absolutely right. I did the start of my research in 2017, and I’ve continued to research since then. I presented some of my research a couple of weeks ago to the College of Policing Fast Track to Inspectors, and it’s a wonderful session — I get to spend three hours with these police officers. They always rock my world. But the one thing that also rocks my world is when I share my research. I use lived experience very much within my research — I want the voice of police officers to be heard, that often-silenced narrative around what they really are experiencing. So I use quotes in my research, and I deliver my research to this wonderful group of young leaders. They start to reflect those experiences back to me. I’m like, “No, it hasn’t changed.” People can tell me identical circumstances to those in my research and say, “Yes, this has happened to me.” It ends up on this cyclical loop of them reflecting back to me exactly what my research tells me. Nothing has changed. Paul: Certainly within the UK there’s not a massive amount of empirical research. However, the research that’s out there is so important to support the journey for change within policing. Without that empirical research, the argument to change can’t take place, can it? Dr Lennie: Absolutely not. Part of me would argue that we’ve had the research for a long time and things still haven’t changed. To answer your question: you’re absolutely right, without the evidence we can’t make change. We need to understand the problem in detail to understand what people are experiencing, and for that we need to ask the right questions. But you also need people within policing — police leaders, senior leaders, decision-makers — to actually listen to that research and act on it. The other thing I feel really passionate about is not just understanding the problem, but also evaluating the interventions we deliver. We need to figure out what works. We need an evidence base for any interventions we put in, to make sure that when we say we’re doing something for people’s wellbeing, we know it’s actually working — not just something we’re doing because we need to do something. Paul: Dr Lennie, a significant part of your work looks at wellbeing within the police community. What are the biggest psychological challenges facing policing personnel at the moment? Dr Lennie: We’ve mentioned some of them already. I think silencing is significant — the inability to speak out, which comes from stigma and fear. The inability to talk about your personal experiences in a safe place with people who won’t judge you. We know that’s one way of moderating PTSD outcomes if you’re exposed to trauma. So the ability to speak out without fear of judgment, but also time to develop trusting relationships which support that. At the moment, officers don’t have time or physical spaces to be together and develop the trusting relationships where they might have those conversations that allow them to process, move on, and be validated in their experience. For me, those are two of the main issues. Paul: I would agree, and the research supports what you’ve just said. In your research on police and families, what were the most striking findings about how policing affects family life? Dr Lennie: It’s difficult because there are a few. The one that struck me initially was the way that police partners — the non-police family members — would talk about being single parents, essentially. Their police officer family member was either working random shift patterns, held back on duty, had rest days cancelled, or had courses put on during family holidays. They were treated as if they weren’t there. The partners carried the whole workload — that emotional labour of looking after the family, juggling the kids, arranging events. If the police officer or police staff member was there, it was a bonus, but not something they could rely on. That was really important in understanding these family members, because they are so isolated. When you get into a relationship with a police officer or member of police staff, you can lose friends and family because they don’t like the police — the police itself is stigmatised, so you can lose part of your support network. It’s very difficult to gain a new support network, because you don’t want to talk about what your partner does for fear of the same judgment. Then, as I said about shift patterns and cancelled rest days, the normal social networks people build — regularly attending a gym class, a hobby, having regular friends — often people find they’re unreliable. They can’t regularly attend places, can’t make new social bonds, so they become really isolated. They’re also so unrecognised by the police organisation. The first thing I did was a survey, as part of the funding requirements. I really struggled to contact police family members, because they’re not a homogenous group. There’s no single identifiable route to communicate with them. Police organisations don’t know who they are. They don’t have their contact details, they don’t readily communicate with them. There’s not a single charity set up for them, not a network set up for them. They’re a really desperate community. They haven’t got a social identity, which in itself would be a protective factor. So that burden and isolation on the partners really came across strongly. The other thing I think is really important to flag is that police partners were recognising that their police officer or police staff partners had no emotional psychological support, and they recognised the impact on them. So they learned to step in and be that support — to debrief their partners. People told me about debriefing their partners when they were driving home from work, so that when they got home and greeted the kids they were in a better mental state. Or making sure that in the evening, when the kids had gone to bed, they would sit their partner down and get them to talk through their day. What that meant is that vicarious trauma, that secondary trauma, was significant. They’re taking on an awful lot. Their partners will talk in detail about some of the stuff they’ve experienced throughout the day — and this is happening day in, day out for the partners. But they’ve got nowhere to take that, because socially they’re not very well supported. They can’t reflect it back on their partner, because they’re trying to look after their mental health. So they’re in this really tricky position where they’re holding a lot of trauma, coping with somebody highly traumatised who’s probably struggling with their own mental health, and they’ve got nowhere to go in terms of social support. It’s a testing environment for police partners, and we owe them an awful lot. Paul: You’re absolutely right, and like I said earlier, it’s such an under-researched and important area. I know that from personal experience. Why do you think the wellbeing of police families has historically received so little attention? Dr Lennie: This is such a good question. Internationally, the research is out there — it’s just not been done in the UK. Paul: Not in the UK. Dr Lennie: No, not in the UK. In all honesty, I probably can’t answer it, but I can hazard a guess. Wellbeing has been so badly looked after — wellbeing in policing itself, looking after police officers. It’s only been in the last 10 or so years that we’ve really focused on that, with the National Police Wellbeing Service. Before that, there wasn’t this focus at all on officer wellbeing. So the recognition of families correlates with that. We’re only just starting to unpick what’s happening for our own staff, never mind what’s happening for our families. Paul: From the families you spoke with, what types of support did they see as making the biggest difference? Dr Lennie: The first one would be networking. They want to speak to other police families, which is so sad considering they’re not networked. This is one of my passions — trying to establish this. In focus groups with different family members, I would have a partner with young children asking questions of a partner with older children who had been through that cycle of young children and shifts. They were asking how they coped and what they did. I really got the sense that if we’d been somewhere physical rather than online, afterwards they would have liked to toddle off to the pub or somewhere and exchange numbers. They supported one another, and they asked for that. They want to be connected to other police families, to have that validation. They talked a lot about having somewhere to gather with other police families. This goes back to a problem with police officers and staff: we no longer physically have places for police officers and their families to go that are safe. They said, “We can’t go to the pub — we’ll be overheard, it’s really risky, and the things we’re talking about aren’t great.” They talked about the loss of police social clubs. I haven’t mentioned intergenerational trauma yet, but a lot of police officers and police staff had parents who, like mine, were police officers. They either went into the job themselves or ended up marrying a police officer. As they grew up, they had police social clubs — they had that connection, they met other police children. I was there, I did that. The wives would meet up with wives. A lot of grandparents were involved in my study, and they wanted to meet other grandparents. They want to be networked and have a space to meet other police families and understand the experience. The other thing they talked about was police-friendly daycare — that came up every single time. Because of revolving shift patterns, late finishes, cancelled rest days, childcare provision does not flex for policing, and that’s a real problem. The other thing was family mental health support. This comes into the intergenerational trauma piece — they recognised that their children were really affected by the mental health and wellbeing of the police parent, but also by what their parent was doing as a police officer. They wanted family therapy provided, not just for the children but also to bring the police officer or member of police staff into the therapy space, because they knew it was a struggle to get them to do that. Paul: You just touched on something about the children and their realisation of what their police parent does. It made me reflect on an award ceremony I attended. I was given a Chief Constable’s Commendation for a massive child sex abuse case. I was encouraged to bring the wife and kids along, as you do. But what I didn’t realise was the detail they would go into when giving the award — because I’d never talked about work at home, not ever. Being aware of the vicarious trauma risk, I didn’t want to do that, especially to the kids. I will always remember the look of fear and horror on their faces as they sat listening to why Dad was getting this award. Had I known, I would never have taken them. Dr Lennie: Absolutely, and that’s so difficult. Children are so aware — even when parents try to protect them. It was really interesting: I had adult children in the focus groups I was running, and parents talked about the effect on their children. There’s a real sense of awareness about what their parents were doing, and a worry and anxiety about that. Particularly now with news access, digital media and social media, it’s much more difficult to protect children. That detail fuels little minds to worry. We know from the international research that children living with people with PTSD or mental health issues are more likely to go on to have somatic issues and anxieties themselves. Police children would also talk about feeling that the job was more important than them. They got that sense that their parents weren’t around. Paul: Their parents are not around. Dr Lennie: They’re not around. They’re saving other people’s families, but what about our family? That contradiction — where am I in this space? Again, that’s something police organisations could do more about: bringing children and families in and making them feel part of the organisation, more supported. Paul: I would absolutely echo what you just said, because my kids pretty much thought the same thing — that the job was more important than the family. To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t until I started reflecting on this myself that I could see how they might think that. But at the time, doing the job, it wasn’t even a thought in my mind. Dr Lennie: I think that’s the way it is with policing. From what I said about how I was when I was struggling with my mental health — there’s so much risk and fear within the organisation. You’re seeing so many threats, dealing with that, and you carry it on your shoulders as your obligation. It’s very difficult to see a wider picture. You’re dealing with threat and risk, and when it’s children, it’s really serious and will draw you to it — that’s natural. It’s hard for police officers not to present like that, because the urgency is with the organisation and the threat they’re dealing with. But it’s very difficult for young minds to take that all in. Paul: How do occupational stresses in policing spill over into family functioning and relationships? Dr Lennie: The impact on the partner is significant — they’re carrying everything, and that psychological load is significant. There are other interesting aspects too. Say a police officer has rest days in the middle of the week, and there’s nothing for them to do, so they get an easy rest day. Whereas the other partner typically has a more flexible Monday-to-Friday job — they’ll sacrifice their careers to have that flexibility, because they know policing won’t. So their careers get sacrificed. They typically have weekends off with the kids, so their work never ends, and they can become a little resentful that the police officer with a Tuesday and Wednesday off gets to do their hobbies, go for a run, go to the gym. There’s the juggling of everything. If the plumber or electrician needs to come out, they’ll be the ones who deal with it — they’re carrying that workload too. There’s the psychological impact of what’s being brought into the home, but also living with somebody who’s stressed and whose mental health may be compromised. We know from the figures that psychological illness is so high in policing. Living with somebody struggling with that — constantly walking on eggshells. Children not displaying emotion, being told they’re weak if they display emotions — I was really interested in that, because it was my finding for my PhD. I knew it, because I was brought up with exactly the same rules around emotions: we don’t show emotions. That bit me on the bottom. It’s seen as a weakness, and that’s exactly what I was taught by both my parents. That plays out in family homes, and this is the intergenerational trauma. Children who want to be like their parents, thinking about this wonderful job that takes all the parents’ focus — they want to go out and do that job. They tend to join the job, but they’ve learned the rules around dissociation and emotional silencing before they’ve even got into the job. So their ability to process emotions is — and I don’t mean this badly, because I’m talking about myself here — a lot more compromised. Their ability to cope with emotions is less sophisticated. There are a lot of ways it’s playing out for everybody in the home. Paul: From your perspective, what organisational factors most strongly influence wellbeing within policing? Dr Lennie: The obvious ones, as we’ve talked about, are the ability to have time to build trusting relationships, self-stigma, and the stigmatisation of mental health and emotions. Punitive responses to help-seeking are probably one of the worst things we see. We look at policy and procedure about how people are responded to when they’re struggling with mental ill health. Say you’re on a response team, and you say, “Look, I’m not feeling great, I’m not doing so well, I’d like some time.” Typically the response of the organisation, which is quite risk averse, is to remove you from the front line, remove you from your team, and put you into some other job that’s not public-facing. That’s typically done to prevent risk to the organisation, risk to the public, and probably thinking, “I’m removing people from the place where they’ve been traumatised.” What that’s actually doing is sending a signal that you are less than, isolating people from the very social group that should be able to support them, and singling them out as different, less than, not worthy of doing the job. Other examples: going for specialist roles — if you’ve got any mental health issues, you can’t apply for them, so people won’t express them. People returning from sick leave with mental ill health being put on an action plan. This might seem positive, to make sure they’re supported in the right way, but typically you can’t apply for things when you’re on an action plan. So it’s a punitive response in terms of promotion or sideways moves into specialist departments. A lot of the organisational structures, policies and processes don’t have an empathetic, compassionate response to people’s mental ill health or help-seeking, which reinforces the culture of silencing and stigmatisation. That perpetuates the silencing and stigmatisation, which I think is more of an issue than anything else in policing. Most research starts off saying policing is a stressful role where you’re exposed to a lot of trauma, violence, et cetera. Yes, that’s true. But for me, that is the context of policing — it’s not the harm that’s caused. The context is something violent, where you’re present with a lot of threat or a lot of death. So psychologically your amygdala is firing, you’re seeing threats everywhere — you’re in this context where there’s threat. Paul: In flight mode, aren’t you? Dr Lennie: Yes, constantly. But then you’re in the organisation and there’s a punitive response. You feel very threatened if you’re help-seeking — it’s seen as career-limiting, and the behaviour of the organisation, which is less than compassionate to the officers within it, fuels that fear. As you know, officers under investigation are more likely to commit suicide, which is a real issue. Investigations go on for some time. The way it’s handled often isn’t transparent — they’re not being given updates, which is concerning. Again, people are removed from their frontline roles, so they’re isolated. A lot of this can contribute to mental ill health. We need to think about the context of policing again. Yes, it’s highly traumatising — lots of violence, threat and risks to life. But actually, it’s the way police officers are treated through policy, process, leadership and daily decisions that contributes to mental ill health in policing. Paul: Very well said. Thank you for that. Dr Lennie: Got there in the end. Paul: Very well said. I want to move away from wellbeing directly and talk about your connection with the academic working group based at Anglia Ruskin University. Can you explain what the group does? Dr Lennie: Anglia Ruskin heads up the Investigator Wellbeing and Retention Group. The NPCC lead — in fact, he’s just left — was Martin Brunning, who was an ACC from Cambridge. He ran an academic reference group that supported the Investigator Wellbeing and Retention Group. He was the lead for that. The academic reference group is a group of academics across the UK — and possibly further — who are researchers in police mental health and wellbeing. They’re there to support the national lead and the national group on investigator wellbeing. We gather quite regularly and share updates on our own research and what we’re doing. We also hear about issues the police are experiencing — what their problems are. Our aim is to support policing in identifying those issues and addressing them using an evidence base, so that we can actually make a difference for police officer mental health and wellbeing. It’s about using that academic rigour to understand the problem — as we started off this conversation — but also how to tackle it, and whether what we do is actually making a difference, rather than just doing something because we know something needs to be done. Paul: You’ve probably answered my next question, which was: how can academic research translate into real operational change within forces? Dr Lennie: This is the holy grail — this is my real passion. It’s about that difference, knowledge into practice. For me, it’s about understanding the problem through good rigorous research, but also evaluating anything we do in response. At the moment, there’s a lot that goes on in policing in terms of wellbeing, and it’s disparate and all over the country. There are really great people doing lots of really great initiatives. But I don’t know of many that are properly evaluated — maybe a few — to understand exactly what impact they’re having on the front line or on the officers and staff within the organisation. What we need to be doing is properly evaluating initiatives, because if we don’t, we don’t know what’s happening. Typically, something’s done and there’s no change; or something’s done and there is change, there is a benefit, but because we don’t understand what that benefit is, initiatives get defunded. That’s something I’m seeing happen so often, and I think it’s more damaging than not doing anything at all. You’re telling police officers, “We know there’s a problem. We’re going to implement something for two years.” Then money gets tight, we’ve got no business case, no figures, we don’t understand what the actual change is — we pull the money. It says to police officers, “Well, we don’t care anymore.” In the current climate, where police officers and staff are feeling unsupported — the public don’t love them, the government doesn’t love them, the organisation doesn’t love them — it is so bad for people’s mental health. For me, academic researchers are there to help evaluate programmes when the police are looking to invest in them. That’s probably the most important thing. Paul: And of course, if that’s done, they have the argument to fight for further funding — to keep the most protective interventions running. Dr Lennie: Absolutely. I’ve got a project in for funding at the moment, and one of the things we’ve costed in is a health economist. We recognise that even though we might be doing all the measures — do the individuals feel better for the intervention we’re proposing? — what the organisation is going to want, if it’s going to continue to fund an intervention, is to know what’s the difference to the organisation. What’s the benefit? How are we retaining staff? How are sickness levels affected? That also goes wider for society: how do we influence governments? Part of the problem I see for policing and police wellbeing is that it’s not prioritised by the government. We quite rightly have priorities around violence against women and girls — and I’m not challenging that as a priority — but we also need wellbeing to be a priority. Otherwise, chief constables and PCCs aren’t going to be able to focus on it, because they’ll have to focus their attention on what the government says is priority. We need to make decent business cases that prove the point about retention, recruitment, sickness rates, productivity, and how that translates into reducing crime. Paul: I think we all realise now that mental health and wellbeing support within policing is no longer a nice-to-have. It is an absolute must-have. Dr Lennie: Absolutely. You wouldn’t send somebody into a fire without protective equipment. We’re in a place where we’re dealing with the context of trauma that policing involves, but we also need the ways we treat people to make sure they can stay well. It isn’t inevitable that people are going to get ill just because they’re exposed to traumatic events. Professor Greenberg, who invented TRiM, said it’s the environment you are in before, during, and after that dictates whether you stay well or get ill. That’s exactly what we need to sort out, because we can’t change the context. It’s not inevitable that people will get ill. It’s not inevitable that people will leave. We just need to change the way we support them. Paul: Absolutely. One of the things I’ve been working on is a systematic review looking at literature that’s explored digital forensics and mental health over the past five years. One of the most glaringly obvious things to come out of it is that organisational support — if it’s not there — has a horrific impact on an individual’s mental health. The policies and procedures that surround what that person does on a daily basis also have a really significant effect. I’m submitting that for publication shortly. Dr Lennie: Excellent, and that’s very timely. The Leapwise survey, the National Wellbeing Survey, has come up with some really interesting findings. Not new findings, but it’s interesting that a large-scale survey of 40,000 police officers has now shown us that psychological safety is an issue in policing. We knew that, but now we’ve kind of proved it because we’ve got that big data sample. We also know that police officers aren’t getting the chance to take breaks, and that has a significant impact. There’s a correlation between not being able to take breaks and psychological wellbeing. Going back to what I was saying about having time to develop trusting relationships so you can have those conversations — and the other thing was leadership support. Being able to trust your SLT, feel you’re being supported for emotionally demanding work. Those are the things that come up, which have been through the literature — and obviously you’re finding it in your review. With this National Police Wellbeing Service, I was lucky enough to go to the Leading With Care conference that Leapwise put on, based on the survey. For the first time I was in a police wellbeing conference space where we were discussing with police officers, practitioners and senior leaders — and the word “resilience” was not brought up once. It was like a hallelujah moment. For as long as I can remember, we have put emotional psychological wellbeing on the individual, and we’ve used resilience as this bar to beat people up against: “You are not resilient enough. You are too weak. You are not doing it right. You can’t cope. You aren’t made of the right stuff. We’re recruiting the wrong people — they’re too young, they’ve not had life experience.” All of this is wrong. It’s not about individual resilience; it’s about the organisation and the way it treats people. I’m really excited about your publication and your review, because it sounds like it’s going to bring all the literature together alongside this survey — so we can actually say, for once, it’s the organisation, not the individual. Paul: Absolutely. Like you, I’m tired of hearing people use the word “resilience,” because it puts the onus on the investigator, or the cop, or whoever. If they’re not resilient enough, they’re seen as weak. That needs to stop. Dr Lennie: Yes. For once, I actually think the police might listen, and not necessarily because there’s a very good survey being done and all the research has been collated in one space. I think they’ll listen because we can no longer recruit, and we can no longer retain officers. For those reasons, they’re going to have to listen, because that is a business case. Paul: It absolutely is. You touched on retention and training. On a weekly basis, almost every week, I see jobs for DFIs advertised from different police forces around the country. What that tells me is they can’t keep the people they’ve got. From the frontline policing perspective, it’s very much the same. You’re getting kids coming in who’ve just left school or come in from university — they don’t have any experience or exposure to the level of trauma they’re about to deal with. As soon as they realise how demanding the role is, they’re gone. Dr Lennie: Yes. I’m quite optimistic about the future because of our younger generation. They recognise they need to be treated better. They care more about their mental health, and they’re quite rightly going to speak up about it. They will vote with their feet. They’re not going to hang around. This isn’t a 30-year career anymore, where we’re looking towards our pensions. They’re looking to the here and now, and to quality of life, which is really important. Sarah Charman’s work is also really interesting on this issue. We know that voluntary resignations last year were the highest they’ve ever been in policing in recorded time. Sarah Charman’s work points towards how people are supported, and how their family life and wellbeing — that work-life balance — is actually felt. It’s down to psychological support, and when people have caring responsibilities, whether the organisation is willing to flex with people. So that family piece comes into it again, which also came into the survey — if the family work-life balance didn’t work, people’s psychological wellbeing dipped. Paul: It will, because as we already know, social support comes through as a massive protective factor for police and in general. When you’re talking about forums for police and families, it came as no surprise — we know that works. It protects. Dr Lennie: Absolutely. There’s also the protective factor of having a strong identity. Policing typically has had a really strong identity, and that’s a protective factor against stress — but I wonder how much that’s being eroded at the moment, with the lack of socialisation and social supports. In the same way, police families don’t have that strong sense of identity, so they don’t have that protective factor against stress. Paul: I agree. What are the biggest barriers when it comes to research? Dr Lennie: Getting the confidence of police officers and police staff in research is difficult. So much has been done that they don’t see the results or impact of — within the organisation as well as externally. As academics, perhaps we need to be better at collaborative working and making sure people are engaged from the very beginning, in the design of the research — which is what the academic reference group is about — and that throughout that journey they’re kept updated, and they understand the practical outcome for them. They’re also burnt out and fatigued, so it’s very difficult to get them to engage. Trust is a real issue. I’ve got a PhD student researching unprocessed trauma, psychological wellbeing, decision-making and misconduct — a really tricky subject to talk about, because mental health issues are stigmatised, and obviously misconduct isn’t something people are particularly willing to talk about. Getting people to trust research, to understand that we’re not necessarily going to tell the organisation what they’ve said, is important. It can be difficult as a researcher engaging with individual organisations. Every police force has a specific, individual process for everything they do — across the 43 police forces, it’s also the same for research engagement. It’s often difficult to find the right route into an organisation, even if you know people within it, and to understand what their process is. I work with many different police forces, and every single one has a different approach to research support and their ethical processes. Paul: It’s really difficult gaining that world to get inside, isn’t it? Dr Lennie: Absolutely. There’s that trust as well — I keep coming back to trust. Policing, quite rightly, isn’t a very trusting organisation. It’s constantly being scrutinised and beaten up for whatever it does — it’s a very difficult space to be in. But also, everybody within the organisation is dealing with threat and risk. Their fight-or-flight, as you say, is kicking off — their amygdala is firing. They’re always risk aware — I’m not going to say risk averse, but very risk aware. So getting people’s confidence is difficult. I like to think that because we’re ex-police officers, they’ll hopefully trust us and understand the mission we’re on, which is to try and do better for policing as a whole. It is a difficult organisation to engage and work with, but I understand that. Paul: One of the important things to consider is that you’ve walked the path. You’ve done the job, you know first-hand what it’s like, and you’ve made the transition into academia to continue trying to make a difference, to support staff. Do you think that when people understand you were there, you did the job for over a decade, that helps build the trust? Dr Lennie: I think what helps build the trust most is when I stand there and say what I said to you — that I had complex PTSD and anxiety, my mental health suffered, I didn’t want to leave the job, and it broke my heart to make that decision to leave. Yes, we all know ex-police officers, and that’s something. But I think when you’re honest about the impact policing can have, and how that is your passion for making a difference in policing — that’s when people trust you. That’s what I found when I was still in the job, and I spoke about my mental health: it was then that people opened up to me. Just that realisation that you’re not there to judge them, that you haven’t got a political agenda other than to make the place a better place. Paul: Before we end the podcast — if anybody wants to know more about the group over at Anglia Ruskin, where do they find that information? Dr Lennie: You can always email me — I’m very happy with that. I’m also going to throw Emma Williams in here, my director of the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Uniformed Public Services — she’ll be delighted to hear from anybody. If you go to our page at Anglia Ruskin, there should be NPCC links into Investigator Wellbeing and Retention. There are different ways in, but if anybody’s struggling to find out more, drop me an email. I’m more than happy to point people in the right direction, give them more information and get them on board. Paul: Fantastic. Can we include your academic email in the podcast when it goes out? Dr Lennie: Most definitely. Absolutely. Paul: Just before we close — is there anything else you’d like to share? Dr Lennie: The final thing I’d like to say is that police officer mental health and wellbeing always feels like it’s last on the list. I want police officers, police staff and their families to know that what they do is amazing. What they give up and sacrifice every day — their psychological space, their cognitive processing, their own mental wellbeing, their physical presence with their families, their emotional presence with their families — and what families do to support them, pick up the pieces, put them back together and send them to work the next day: we do know, we see you, and we are very grateful for everything you do. You deserve a better quality of life, good mental health, and everything that everybody else in the world is lucky to have. You deserve that too. So please allow yourself that time to be well and to be with your families. Paul: Dr Lennie, that was amazing. That got me. Dr Lennie: Oh, well, thank you — and to your family. Everybody who’s been in policing, and their families, have been touched by it. It’s taken a toll on them, and it’s a tough job. I’m generally grateful that people are still there. I’m not there anymore, but people are still doing that job, and I just know the toll it’ll be taking. I just want them to be known, to be seen, to be heard, and to know we do care. Paul: Thank you very much for joining me on this episode of Forensic Focus. Ladies and gentlemen, please thank Dr Lennie. Dr Lennie: Thank you for having me. Thank you very much.