Award success for mental health car
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A scheme that provides mental health help and support when the police are called out to people in crisis has been nominated for a national award.
The Mental Health Joint Response Car provides help and support when the police are called out to people in crisis in Cambridgeshire.
It is funded by NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, part of the Integrated Care System, and provides expert mental health staff who attend callouts alongside police officers in two specialist response cars.
The scheme recently won the regional Excellence in Mental Health Care category of the 2023 Parliamentary Awards and has now been nominated for the national honour.
The success of the scheme is due to having a trained mental health specialist on hand that can help calm a situation and, in many cases, avoid police using their powers to detain people, or unnecessary conveying to hospital. The scheme also significantly decreases the amount of time police officers spend at each incident allowing vital resource to be allocated elsewhere.
The NHS Parliamentary Awards calls on MPs around the country to find and nominate those individuals or teams working for the NHS, who they think have made the biggest improvements to health and care services in their constituencies, across ten categories.
Detective Inspector Dan Cooper said: “It’s fantastic news that the mental health car has been recognised regionally and now nominated for a national award.
“The scheme helps to get specialist care to those in mental health crisis as soon as possible. As well as this, it frees up vital police resource and helps to take pressure off local NHS.
“With so many hours of officers’ time taken up dealing with incidents which involve mental health, and demand for our services at an all-time high, this is an excellent scheme that benefits everyone.”
Louis Kamfer, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Strategic Commissioning at NHS Cambridgeshire & Peterborough said: “The Mental Health Joint Response Car initiative is a great example of partnership working across health and policing in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough that is making a real difference in our communities.”
The scheme will now go head-to-head with other winners from across the country for a national award, presented at a special ceremony in Westminster, London, on the 5 July.