'Squabbling' between police and NHS in North Yorks hits people facing crisis

North Yorkshire County councillors expressed exasperation after hearing from both the county’s police and crime commissioner’s office and Tees, Esk and Wear Valley NHS Trust that an agreement had been created specifically to counter confusion over mental health roles.

A meeting of the authority’s scrutiny of health committee heard while the increase on demand on North Yorkshire Police related to mental health had nearly doubled in the last couple of years, a lack of “health-based places of safety” to take people to meant police were spending hours transporting them across the county.

Members were told despite police vehicles being less than ideal for transporting people with mental health issues, last year saw police take 52 per cent of people to place of safety rather than an ambulance, due to ambulance shortages.

A report to the meeting stated: “The true multi-agency response to a person in crisis that may be detained under a section 136 detention should have the person in crisis at the centre of the procedure and their needs, care and support built around it.

“Currently procedures are built around each organisation’s needs and there are areas that mirror and work well together, but equally there are areas that differ.

“It’s when these areas of difference are highlighted that there is confusion and delay and the only person that really suffers is the person in crisis. Inter-agency squabbling over who should take primacy, who should transport, who should retain ownership is not in the best interest of the person in crisis and causes more harm than can be measured.”

Adele Coulthard, of the trust, said ‘street triage’ services - where a mental health nurse works alongside the police officers out on call to ensure people who need mental health treatment receive it as quickly as possible - would be extended across the county to cut demand on the places of safety.