PSNI to End Welfare Checks Without Risk of Harm — SkimNews
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Right Care Right Person: From the start of November, the PSNI will no longer carry out concern-for-welfare checks unless there is a risk to life or harm or a crime; 999 calls will still be triaged and can be passed to other emergency services or health and social care staff.
- Police Service of Northern Ireland: The force handles about 30,000 mental-health calls a year, roughly 80 a day, and ACC Ryan Henderson told a Stormont committee contacts had reached "unprecedented levels" — of thousands of calls about a person potentially in danger, only 3% related to crime, and a "significant proportion" of calls come from health workers.
- England and Wales: Some police forces there have followed the Right Care Right Person approach since 2023, and Northern Ireland is now introducing it in phases, with the PSNI saying the change is designed to reduce avoidable delays and improve consistency in decision-making.
- Charles Little, whose parents-in-law Michael and Marjorie Cawdery were killed in a 2017 "frenzied attack" by Thomas Scott McEntee, who was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and received a minimum 10-year sentence, backs the policy and says it might have "saved the day", adding that a police response can frighten people in crisis and worsen the situation.
- Ross Irvine of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Northern Ireland says mental health services are "currently at crisis point", with 30% of posts across the province vacant, and warns that a policy removing the safety net the PSNI currently provides and transferring it to already-struggling services gives cause for concern.
- George Hannah of the British Association of Social Workers' Northern Ireland branch says the rollout is "too quick" with insufficient resources; most social workers do not want to work alongside police all the time because of the potential for escalation, but losing that support raises concerns — "we're just moving people around."
- Siobhan O'Neill, Northern Ireland's mental health champion, says the policy "needs to happen" because police were attending calls where there really was no policing issue, but she is disappointed no investment has been made in health and mental health services to provide a backfill alternative, having previously called for a regional crisis intervention service.
Why it matters: Health and social care staff in Northern Ireland are being handed roughly 30,000 police mental-health calls a year even as 30% of mental health posts sit vacant, with the handover starting in November. The PSNI says the change is designed to reduce avoidable delays; psychiatrists and social workers say it removes the PSNI's safety net without the promised alternative service.
Ask SkimNews
