Helen Garrick: Mental Health Section Chair of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation on health workers at risk as police stop attending mental health callouts

Mental health nurses are worried the public, patients and health workers will be put at risk when Police stop attending some mental health callouts.

From Monday, Police won’t attend ‘low risk callouts’ where there is no immediate risk to life and safety.

Instead, Health NZ is expected to pick up the work.

Leaked documents show only interim standard operating procedures have been developed by Health NZ.

Mental Health Section Chair of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation Helen Garrick tells Heather du Plessis-Allan the plan is in its infancy but the industry does not have a sufficient workforce to manage the increase in workload.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Afternoon. Now there is worry about the fact that the
cops are going to stop attending some mental health callouts
next week, but no one knows exactly how this is
going to work. So from Monday police will not attend
what they call low risk callouts where there's no immediate
risk life and safety. Health New Zealand is expected to
pick up the work, but leaked documents show that only
interim standard operating procedures have been developed. Helen Garrick is

(00:24):
the Mental Health Section chair of the New Zealand Nurses Organization. Hey, Helen, Hi, Heather, Helen,
what's Health New Zealand's plan? Who's going to go to
the low risk callouts if the cops aren't going?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Well? The plan is still in its I would say, infancy.
There's still some work going back and forth between the
unions and Tafara war Are representatives. We anticipate that this
work will fall within the mental health services and in

(00:57):
particular the crisis teams in the Mental health services. The
problem is we don't yet have a sufficient workforce to
be able to manage the increase in workload.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, but so do you I mean, do you guys
actually know how this works? So let's say Monday, there's
a call that comes in says somebody's having a mental
health crisis. Normally the cops would go out. Now the
cops aren't going out. What do you do?

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well. What I'd like to make clear, because I think
it hasn't been clear in some of the narratives, is
that we do not now expect police to go out
to people who are low risk or who are consenting
for treatment and can get themselves to mental health services

(01:46):
or perhaps their families can get them there. That is
not a police role and so that isn't changing at all.
What we're looking at is the risk situations where the
person is in such mental distress they're unable to get
themselves into mental health service or perhaps their family is

(02:08):
not able to get them in. And so we need
to be clear these are risk situations that we're talking about.
We're not talking about the police being a taxi service.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
What's going to happen, So the cops are going to
sit with the person in emergency departments for up to
an hour. What happens after that they.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Will be handing over the person to the emergency department,
and the nurses in the emergency department will attempt to
get the Christ's Team there as soon as possible. This
is part of the problem. We haven't set up significant
services to be able to address this quickly, and so

(02:50):
the person is likely to remain in ED because crisis
teams start are out doing work in the community. There
hasn't been a build up of the mental health workforce
to be able to take care in the s extra workload.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
So you literally may not have enough people to actually
come and sit with this person until that scene.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
No, we don't have enough people. As that person sits there,
I can assure you Christ's ten staff will be in
the community working with people in their homes, attempting to
persuade in some occasions people to come in for treatment.
They will be working fully in the community. They will

(03:32):
come into ED when they can to see people, but
there is no workforce out there to pick up the
sextra work.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Helen, thanks very much, really appreciate your time. Helen Garrick
ends it in no Mental Health section. Share for more
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