In November 2017, The PTC was awarded £1.5million Grant from LIBOR to expand the Psychological Wellbeing Programme for Police patients. Since introducing the new Programme it has become evident that the number of police patients who wished to be admitted for treatment was growing and would continue to do so in the future.
The PTC felt strongly that it had a responsibility to respond to this growing demand for psychological treatment, and the only way it would be able to do this, would be to increase its real estate and facilities.
Throughout November and December last year the counselling rooms at Castlebrae
underwent a refurbishment funded by a donation from the Scottish Police Benevolent Fund. These rooms now provide a more relaxing atmosphere for an essential part of the PWP.
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An unused external space at Castlebrae was also converted last year to create a new wellbeing courtyard. This offers a peaceful and relaxing area, where classes can be held in the summer months, and patients can practice the techniques they’ve learnt privately.
With the grant and additional fundraising to match fund, The PTC also hopes to be able to add a purpose built Psychological Wellbeing wing at the Harrogate Centre. As well as increasing bedroom capacity, the new wing will include bespoke workshop areas for patients to take part in classes, complementary therapy rooms and specially designed counselling rooms.
The new wing will allow us to increase the capacity of the PWP and offer support for the growing numbers of officers presenting with these needs. The development of this wing is of course dependent on planning permissions, so we will continue to update colleagues as we move forward.
How is the programme going?
The PTC is currently conducting an internal review of the Psychological Wellbeing Programme. This review will look at all patients that attend the PWP between May and November 2018, at both Castlebrae and St Andrews.
Patient participation in the review is voluntary and those that agree to take part must leave a suitable e-mail contact and sign a form allowing us to contact them. All replies are anonymous via Survey Monkey and participants cannot be identified through the data.
Six weeks after they have attended the PWP, participants will be sent an email via Survey Monkey asking them to complete a short questionnaire. This includes the PHQ and GAD psychometric measures of anxiety and depression, which we use on admission and discharge, followed by a few questions to explore their experiences in the weeks after leaving us. The additional questions cover whether or not they have received any further input, who the input was from and if they had any reviews with Occupational Health after being at The PTC. We also ask what elements of the PWP they have found most useful since leaving.
We hope the review will allow us to better understand the benefits of the PWP on a longer-term basis and identify any issues that patients face once they leave us. It may also lead us to consider a much larger scale external study in the future, which will coincide with the planned expansion of our real estate.
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