- Conference
- 2024 Police, Probation and CAFCASS Conference
- Date
- 20 June 2024
- Decision
- Carried
The pressure on our police staff members to adapt and train for their ever-changing roles continues every year. New regulations, new protocols, new legislation means members needing to adapt their working practices and processes. Additionally, police budgets see our members jobs at risk. Resilience is at bare minimum and in some organisational structures our members even struggle to get annual leave let alone time for training.
Our members are no different from police officers and they need to be given opportunities to refresh their knowledge and develop.
Many of our members are given opportunities to learn through developed online packages. This e-learning training will often come with an expected completion timescale but often very little, if any, time is afforded to them to do so. They are expected to complete this training while at the same time maintaining their substantive role. This adds to the overall workload pressure, stress and burnout that our members feel.
There is a further expectation of employers that after completing these packages our members are suitably trained and competent when the reality is probably the opposite. When mistakes are then made, employers are quick to look at disciplinary actions as means of dealing with mistakes.
Of course, members need to maintain competence, develop and learn but appropriate “Protected Training Time” needs to be given to them to do so.
Conference therefore calls on the SGE to:
1)Campaign for “Protected Training Time’ to be afforded to all our Police & Justice members.