Report Summary
This report provides members of the Policing Performance Committee with an overview of work underway across the policing system, and with partners, in relation to mental health distress, vulnerability and the response by policing. This follows publication of the Framework for Collaboration and linked Collaborative Commitments in February 2025.
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Meeting
The publication discussed was referenced in the meeting below
Policing Performance Committee - 16 September 2025
Date : 16 September 2025
Location : online
Background and Context
In early 2022, following discussion at Authority Board and Committees on pressures being faced by Police Scotland in responding to mental health related demand, Martyn Evans, then Chair of the Authority, made a commitment that the Authority would place a greater focus on the appropriate police response to calls for service around mental health issues. Since then, there have been several related public Authority Board and Committee discussions and sessions at Members Seminars.
The Scottish Parliament’s Criminal Justice Committee also expressed an interest in this area of policing and held an evidence session in May 2022, to which the Authority and Police Scotland contributed.
To take these discussions further, the Authority convened a conference on the society-wide impact of poor mental health in the community, with a focus on vulnerability and distress, in December 2022.
This event aimed to:
• Bring together partner agencies and other key stakeholders to establish a collective understanding of the challenge and the current approaches to addressing it.
• Set the wicked issue in the context of a growing challenge not only to policing but to the public and third sector and communities across Scotland, the UK and wider.
• Describe the proactive and prevention focused work being taken forward by policing in collaboration with key partners.
• Recognise the interdependencies, partnership interfaces and opportunities in the system, identifying current best practice that could be adopted as common practice with a view to embedding nationally consistent approaches.
Following this event the Authority also published a briefing on mental health and policing, which details the strategic position in relation to mental health related calls for service and the Police Scotland response to these.
The Authority, Police Scotland and Scottish Government agreed that mental health distress related demand on policing and an optimised whole system response to that demand requires a multi-agency and multi-faceted approach including effective partnerships, training, community engagement, and support mechanisms for officers and other practitioners.
