What is Right Care, Right Person (RCRP)? It's an operational model that changes the way the emergency services respond to calls involving concerns about mental health. It aims to make sure the right services deal with health-related calls, instead of the police, so that vulnerable people get the right support. 

RCRP is being rolled out across the country and we want to make sure you are up to date about its implementation locally. We'll keep you up to date with developments.

Rachel has written an update about the policy, and what it means for Wakefield District...

How has this approach been developed?

Right Care, Right Person was developed by Humberside Police over three years, working together with partners in ambulance, mental health, acute hospitals and social services. These partnerships aimed to ensure RCRP could achieve its objective to provide the best care to the public by ensuring the most appropriate response to calls for service.

Requests for police involvement concerning mental health / health included:

• Phase 1: Concern for welfare
• Phase 2: Absent without leave (AWOL) from a mental health establishment or walkout of relevant facilities (housing/custody/healthcare premises)
• Phase 3: Clarification of the transportation/conveyancing of an individual
• Phase 4: Addressing the wait times associated with Section 136 of the Mental health Act and where the police have escorted someone to another service.

Channel 4 aired this short piece about the RCRP in Humberside in September 2023.

Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust developed the RCRP Toolkit which outlines the RCRP policy and showcases how calls will be triaged to ensure the right service is mobilised. These flow charts are useful to use to decide if the police are the right service to call in different circumstances.

The RCRP is now being rolled out across the country.

• Scotland Yard has suggested a 3-month implementation period however local police forces can dictate their own timelines, to ensure the policy implementation is co-produced at a local level.
• Some other areas of the country have moved across the RCRP already, The equivalent of RCRP in Hampshire started over ten years ago and began with end of the use of police cells as a Place of Safety for 136’s, and then subsequently moved on to ending welfare checks, police support at MHA assessments without a warrant, transportation from MHA assessments, and attending wards to manage violence.
• A phased approach seems to be common for the implementation of RCRP in different areas of the UK.

How will this affect us in West Yorkshire & more locally in Wakefield District?

Although the RCRP policy has been around in West Yorkshire since 2019, full implementation is yet to be finalised.

Collaboration and partners working together is a key part of making sure RCRP works effectively for the people of Wakefield. West Yorkshire as an area seem to be taking their time with implementation to ensure the partners are involved in the process and procedures, training are in place.

The local NHS Trust plan to work closely with statutory partners such as the Police, Ambulance service and Fire and rescue to ensure RCRP works smoothly in Wakefield District. Meetings are planned for early 2024 to continue development of an implementation plan.

Rachel has spoken to colleagues at West Yorkshire Police who have shared the following information:

• West Yorkshire Police have adopted the RCRP model which will be adopted by all forces in England and Wales.
• They assess jobs using the National Decision Making model and contact staff have been first in line for training. If you as a reporting person do not agree with the assessment by contact staff, you can ask to be escalated to a supervisor for a further assessment to be taken. There is a learning database for call takers, with good and bad examples updated onto it.
• In some cases, mental health incidents may require police attendance, however a significant number of calls to policing involve no criminality or safety risk. In these instances, calls can be referred to a more appropriate partner agency.
• In West Yorkshire, there are close working relationship with partners in local authority, healthcare professions and police which have been in place for some time and successfully demonstrates key elements of the national operational model.
• Whilst the current processes focus on ensuring the most appropriate agency deals with health-related calls, Police Officers will continue to perform their key role of keeping people safe and where there is a real and immediate risk to life or serious harm, officers will respond swiftly.
• West Yorkshire Police are currently as Phase 1 and 2 level, as listed above.

They confirm that police will attend calls relating to mental health in the following circumstances:

• There is an immediate, real and substantial risk to the life and/or serious injury to the person or any other person.
• There is reasonable belief that a crime has been, is being or is about to be committed.
• In case of a child there is reasonable belief that the child is suffering or is at risk of suffering immediate and significant harm as set out in S46 of the Children Act 1989.

What will RCRP mean for VCSE organisations working in Mental Health?

We have developed a plan to respond to RCRP locally and have received feedback from Live Well Wakefield, who have been working alongside RCRP policy for a while.

Live Well Wakefield Experience of RCRP

• Live Well Wakefield have been using Yorkshire Ambulance Service for essential welfare checks for some time, following police informing us that they wouldn’t attend a request of ours last year. It is not the ideal pathway due to the stretch on ambulance services but Live Well confirmed it has been used with some success. When there are access issues/concerns the pathway involves West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue service (WYF&RS), which Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) arrange.
• From our experience we call 999, YAS call handler takes details, passes on to the clinician on duty, this clinician then speaks ideally/where possible with the individual themselves, or if needed ourselves, and assesses risk/priority and decides ambulance response and WYF&RS is initiated where needed.
• Live Well have always received a response from their requests for welfare checks via YAS, however the clinician has at times been unable to provide a time frame during busy periods, and perhaps not categorised within the high priority categories.
• Live Well have still received a response to requests for welfare check from police in circumstances where the individual is in a public place with anything that may be a risk/weapon to others, and/or making threats as two examples. 

Our Plan

Short Term

• Speak to colleagues from services to create this updates and produce further updates for the VCSE sector as implementation works progress. 
• As an immediate response, pull together a list of services/contact details to share with organisations, including crisis support services and Adult Social Care etc. An updated document with information on non-urgent mental health support services was uploaded on 4 January 2024.

Medium Term

• Training could take place to support organisations. Nova could facilitate training on topics such as the SBAR technique (used by the NHS and Live Well Wakefield): learning how to gather the right info and advocate effectively for an appropriate response, being assertive and telling services their recommendations of what they should do with the information. It’s practiced across the Live Well team, and they’ve worked on really ensuring they have nailed their understanding of eligibility criteria for mental health services, to confidently give their recommendations.
• Additional training around supporting your team to understand their responsibility in preventing suicide and promoting staff wellbeing. Linking to SafeTALK and ASIST training happening at a local level through Young Lives Consortium and Public Health.

Long Term

• Working with place based strategic leads to co-produce implementation guidelines and communications to all sectors. Ensure there are communication pathways so case studies and learning regarding RCRP in practice can be fed back to key policy partners e.g. Police, YAS, WYF&R, Health.
• Liaising with the VCSE Voices lead Lydia Baldwin & VCSE representatives to ensure concerns / feedback from our sector are taken to meetings they attend and any RCRP information they collect is fed back to the sector through update emails like this.

We will of course keep you all updated of progress with RCRP locally and we should hear more as meetings progress in the New Year.

If you'd like to speak to Rachel about this work, please email rachel.hale@nova-wd.org.uk. Please note we will be closed from 23 December 2023 to 2 January 2024.