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Annex A
SHARING EXPERIENCES - THE OUTSIDE WORLD
1. During the inspection we visited the contact centres of the City of Edinburgh Council and NHS 24 in South Queensferry. Themes emerging from these visits that may be of particular interest to practitioners were as follows.
Training
2. Core training for NHS staff who are not nurse advisors consisted of four weeks, followed by two weeks on a protected 'pod' and supported by an experienced staff member. Training for nurse advisors lasted a minimum of six months. The police service could compare this with its own training arrangements. The skills needed for advising and understanding policing and legal issues are often as complex as nursing skills, yet in some cases much less training is given to police call handlers. The NHS has found that telephone triage requires a new and different set of skills compared to the face to face triage in hospitals and therefore they cannot simply use an untrained nurse. There are parallels here with the use of experienced police officers who staff call centres.
Supervision
3. On our visits to police and other call management facilities we found that effective supervision in call centres was extremely important. We were told by senior NHS 24 mangers that good supervision is the key to good service and that supervisors require focused training and free time to allow them to confront, coach and mentor staff who are having difficulties. Regular monitoring of calls by supervisors is necessary to ensure high levels of service, but we were told that in many places there was little time to do this. We also found supervisors in police facilities who admitted that they did not have either the time or the confidence to do this as they had not received relevant training.
Surveys
4. We found an example in the City of Edinburgh call centre where 500 customers each week are surveyed by telephone and the results fed back to staff individually and collectively. Staff knowledge of the survey process and the follow-up activity was intended to generate a spiral of improvement.
Victims
5. This inspection focused on feedback and quality of service for all users of police services. Nevertheless, we do of course recognise the need to ensure that certain victims of crime particularly receive appropriate and timely information. We had the opportunity to speak to representatives of the Scottish Government Victims Unit and Victim Support Scotland, and found that there may be opportunities for increased focus in some areas of that department's work.
6. The Scottish Executive launched the first ever Scottish Strategy for Victims in 2001, which was reviewed in 2004/05, with an emphasis on the practical outcomes needed to deliver the Strategy. In addition, the National Standards for Victims of Crime were published in 2005 and these were endorsed by agencies within the criminal justice system, who undertook to incorporate the principles behind the Standards into their own procedures. Since then, the emphasis has been on improving and expanding existing victim services, e.g. the Victim Information and Advice service provided by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, streamlining and focussing the work of Victim Support Scotland and taking forward some of the practical issues outlined in the review of the Strategy, such as the provision of an information pack for the families of homicide victims. In addition, other improvements have been advanced, such as the expansion of Victim Notification Scheme and the introduction of a national scheme that allows victims to provide statements to the court.
7. The effect of looking at existing services and at detailed projects meant that there was less emphasis on developing a national approach across all agencies, and this was confirmed during the inspection. Those we consulted spoke of the need to renew the efforts of agencies to ensure that the good work of the last few years was not lost. In our opinion, the role of the police, as set out in the National Standards, is not described in sufficient detail, although we appreciate that achieving agreement across eight forces is not easy. If victims are to understand fully what services they can expect from the police service in Scotland, then we believe that this should be reconsidered when recommendation 2 of this report is being addressed.
8. We have discussed earlier how the arrangements for victims of serious crime are well developed. The Scottish Government recognises the difficulties that victims face in finding their way through the criminal justice system, and has two dedicated websites, one for victims and the other for witnesses, as well as an information leaflet, all of which provide generic information explaining each agencies' role, how to contact them and how to complain. Victims of minor crime, however, may encounter a variety of responses from the police. Many forces provide all victims of crime and incidents with an initial information form or something similar. This gives the details of the officer who dealt with the crime, the force's contact details and normally some victim advice and victim support contact details. It is given to the victim at the time the incident is reported. In other forces a letter is sent to all victims of crime shortly after the incident, giving similar details to those described above. In some cases this letter is followed by correspondence advising victims that the enquiry is complete and informing them of the outcome.
9. We believe that these are helpful attempts to provide initial information to victims and, in some cases, to give feedback on the outcome of police activity. However, we recognise that some victims may view these as they might view 'junk mail', in other words these victims may not see automatically generated correspondence as a quality service. We suggest that a more consistent national approach to feedback, linked to the publication of policing standards, would help to give victims a better understanding of policing activity. Police forces may in fact be selling themselves short by not advising victims of the standard actions that will be taken in response to certain types of incident, as in the following example:
a) Your crime has been permanently recorded on our computer database, which is itself accessible to all police officers. This means that if your property turns up elsewhere in the future, it should be matched with this record.
b) Furthermore, if a suspect in a different crime admits to or is suspected of committing this crime then the connection should be simple to make.
c) The crime and its details will contribute to our overall knowledge of crime in your area, through analysis and statistical interpretation, for the purpose of investigation and working with other agencies to prevent future crimes.
Victim Support Scotland ( VSS)
10. All forces have liaised with this organisation over the years. Contact is usually instigated in one of two ways: victims are automatically referred to VSS unless they actively refuse the offer of its services (opt-out schemes); or, victims must agree to their details being forwarded to VSS (opt-in schemes). The latter option is still exercised by some forces despite the ACPOS policy agreed in 2001 that all forces adopt the former (opt-out) procedure. This decision had followed lengthy discussion with the Information Commissioner and other interested parties to identify ways of increasing the previously disproportionately low numbers of referrals.
11. We believe that VSS could assist the police service further, by helping to provide feedback and updates to victims. As we have mentioned earlier, many officers told us that they had difficulty finding the time to contact victims. Discussions with VSS suggested that Victim Support volunteers could work with the police service to provide these updates. We appreciate the difficulties that facilitating external access to internal police IT systems may present, and we understand that this may give rise to concerns around data protection. However, we believe that these obstacles are not insurmountable. VSS is a strategic partner of the police service, and we know that workable solutions to other information-sharing partnerships have been established in other areas. We suggest that a small pilot scheme be conducted involving the creation of a volunteer victim feedback unit linked to a force contact centre and the new divisional call handling units referred to earlier in this report. If successful, this could result in greatly improved feedback services to victims that have few resource implications for the police service.
Central Scotland Police - Victims First Project
12. During the inspection we took the opportunity to review Central Scotland's Victims First project. The project itself was informed by external research into staff views of various victim issues. The results were analysed and a range of measures then developed to address the emerging findings. Importantly this work considered victims from a multi-agency perspective and consequently the force has been working with criminal justice partners to develop solutions. The following actions have been taken or are planned:
- themed DVDs for staff have been produced to tackle perceptions and improve victim and service user focus;
- by the end of summer 2008 the force intends that the Public Assistance Desk ( PAD) will call back all crime victims;
- staff on the PAD will call victims back to explain delays in officer attendance where this occurs; and
- the force will no longer send letters to victims of crime, and the money saved will pay for a victim care administrator. In future the force will only contact victims in writing if they secure a detection.
13. While this was clearly work in progress, we were impressed with the force's clear focus on victims and the steps being taken to improve feedback and customer care.
HMIC England and Wales
14. In this report we have referred to papers on call management produced by our colleagues in England. These two reports, First contact13 and Beyond the call14, explored practices in forces south of the border only. While there are many similarities between our recommendations and the findings of these reports, we would urge forces to consider their content which goes beyond simply call centre management. There are many differences in policing across the country but many similarities too.
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