Special Issue – Editorial
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Author | Ian Hesketh |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X221083431 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Editorial
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
2022, Vol. 95(1) 3
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/0032258X221083431
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Special Issue –Editorial
Keywords
Policing, Law Enforcement, Wellbeing, Leadership
Having worked towards creating a National Police Wellbeing Service (NPWS) for many
years now, it is with great pride I introduce these pieces of academic work that make a
fantastic contribution to the study of Wellbeing in Policing. The first article (Bell et al)
introduces why this field of study is so critical, outlining the prevalence of mental illness
stigma within law enforcement. This is followed by a breakdown of the NPWS Blue Light
Wellbeing Framework (Pythian et al), used to gauge police forces in the UK and their
response to the key areas of Wellbeing that have an evidence-based approach to im-
proving the working lives of police officers and staff. We use the brand Oscar Kilo (OK) to
highlight the ambition of the NPWS and provide a symbolic reference to our work. The
following articles (Brown & Fleming, Tehrani, Newiss et al) provide insight into the
impact the COVID19 pandemic has had on policing and support the key role wellbeing
has in the policing sphere. The issue continues with a detailed view of specialist areas
within policing, such as the investigation of serious crime (Cartwright & Roach) and the
state of wellbeing focussed research in this realm. What follows is a unique study of the
role of service dogs as organisational support to officers and staff (Quick & Piza), a
provision that is extremely popular within the NPWS, which we refer to as OK9.
Wellbeing is viewed through the health and fitness lens in the next arti cle (Oliver et al)
with a review of an app-based ’move more’challenge carried out for the NPWS. A key
area of Wellbeing research for the NPWS is the annual survey conducted by Durham
University Business School, which together with the Blue Light Wellbeing Framework,
helps us to identify gaps in provision and monitor progress against objectives. In this
paper (Lockey et al) examine workplace stressors and the relationship with exhaustion
and work engagement. Innovative approaches to trauma are explored in the following
paper (Miller et al), detailing the work to develop a trauma events checklist. The final
paper in this issue provides a systematic literature review of the work to date on post-
traumatic stress in UK policing (Foley et al). A poignant reminder of why all of this work
is critical to the wellbeing of the thousands of police officers and staff who keep us all safe.
Ian Hesketh –Guest Editor
National Police Wellbeing Service, College of Policing, UK
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