by Tracy Betts
President | Disabled Police Association
Since the last AGM in a very rainy Liverpool in 2023, the DPA has spent its time building the Committee to ensure we have good representation in terms of knowledge, lived experience of diverse abilities and also geographically, with our 17 members representing over a third of the forces in England and Wales.
Every one of those committee members has continued to work hard for YOU at all levels of our organisations, reiterating the importance and vitality a diverse workforce brings and championing the work the local Disability and Enable networks do in each force throughout the country.
With the support of our NPCC Lead for Disability, ACO Andrew Price, the DPA has kept abreast of emerging themes in our Forces. We have supported and showcased new support associations, groups and individuals, often with ground-breaking initiatives which demonstrate that wherever possible, keeping our disabled talent within policing benefits everyone, including the public we serve.
Our message is reaching the highest levels: at our DPA meeting in December, the Home Secretary, Rt. Hon. James Cleverley MP, dialled in to thank the DPA Committee personally for the work it is doing.
In the last year, the DPA 12 Point Action Plan has been ratified by the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) as ‘good practice’.
The College of Policing (CoP) will be highlighting the DPA 12-Point Plan in its practice bank to support the workplace adjustments toolkit and to help Forces benchmark their progress towards disability inclusion.
DPA work on the national Disability in Policing Survey has begun in earnest, with the NPCC and CoP anxious to use the anonymous data we provide from the survey to work with the DPA in creating a national Disability in Policing strategy, the first in UK policing.
The DPA was recently invited to the Home Office as part of the Deployability Round Table chaired by the Policing Minister, Rt. Hon. Chris Philp, and this was followed up by a series of working groups to discuss the impact of abstractions from frontline policing. I am pleased to report that due to our representations, officers and staff on adjusted duties will no longer automatically be counted as ‘non-deployable’ and are being officially recognised by the Home Office as being extremely valuable to policing.
This recognition and aspects of the DPA 12-Point Plan will be reflected in the next Policing Productivity Review report, due to be published soon.
Of course, we have been remarkably busy with ‘business as usual’ and have continued to work with the other amazing national networks and associations, gaining their expertise and support for our work and theirs, ensuring intersectionality.
As well as all the above, our committee has been working tirelessly as part of the fitness testing working group, the physical demand tactical group and with the Chief Medical Officer, Professor John Harrison at the national Police Wellbeing Service, serving as a ‘critical friend’ on the upcoming guidance for medical standards which will provide much needed clarity and consistency in the assessment of new joiners to policing.
We have been regularly engaging with other partners, such as Supt Paul Burrows, the Police Superintendents Association (PSA) representative for Disability as well as colleagues from the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW).
Most recently we supported the PFEW at the National Ethics Committee, where discussions were held on the impact of some national policies and how they do not always consider how disabled police employees may be disproportionately affected.
We are excited to be partnering with academics at both John Moores Liverpool and Portsmouth Universities to corroborate empirical and anecdotal evidence of ableism with credible research.
This will not only inform and support our organisations to improve in terms of internal culture around diverse ability but also in its service provision to the disabled community.
As promised at our conference, the DPA has submitted Freedom of Information requests to all Forces, including Police Scotland and Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) to determine what has been spent on Employment Tribunals over the last four years. Data is already coming in which shows millions of pounds is being spent, sometimes unnecessarily on defending or settling ETs when often, the simplest of measures could have been employed, with people feeling valued, their talent retained, and public money saved.
Therefore, at the next DPA/NPCC National Conference being held on September 30th and October 1st 2024 in Leicestershire, we will focus on:
- Getting it Right First Time
- People Before Process
- What Success Looks Like
Building on the findings of the Baroness Casey Review, this conference will help and inspire you to:
- Improve workplace culture
- Build trust and confidence
- Develop psychological safety
- Understand our people
- Increase productivity
Thank you wholeheartedly for your support of the work of the Disabled Police Association. I very much look forward to seeing you at the Conference – look out for your invitation email! ∎
