However, acting Chief Inspector Mark Hafey has said he believes the number will remain steady in future years thanks to improvements in the way authorities deal with such cases.
Figures released following a freedom of information request show that in the three years to October the force dealt with 284 welfare incidents related to mental health.
Police officers attended 95 welfare incidents between January and October this year, which compares to 74 for the whole of last year. Figures show that in 2015 the police attended 115 welfare incidents related to mental health. Figures were not recorded before 2015 because the police did not sub-categorise welfare incidents.
But despite the rise, acting Chief Insp Hafey said he did not expect the upward trend to continue.
‘I don’t think the number of welfare incidents we see is going to go up.
‘We are in a much better position to try to reduce the number of cases we respond to now. We can make sure we have the appropriate mechanisms in place for people so they don’t end up calling the police and that is key. That allows us to make sure mental-health incidents can be dealt with really quickly,’ he said.
The force is currently trialling a community support triage programme which involves staff from a number of mental-health agencies speaking with frontline officers to teach them how they should react in certain situations.
Acting Chief Insp Hafey said that every welfare incident was different and officers could be dealing with a case at a certain location for minutes or hours.
The police will always try to take the individual to a place of safety but acting Chief Inspector Hafey said that, in some cases, people still have to be detained in a police cell.
He said: ‘A police cell is not an appropriate place for anyone at a point of crisis to be kept, however we do still detain some people in cells. In some cases, people might be under the influence of drink or drugs, or be violent – it makes the job of the professionals very difficult. They might only be detained until they are no longer under the influence. We have seen a reduction in the number of people detained in cells and that is down to some really good multi-agency work.’
He added: ‘If we are dealing with someone in crisis that person might need long-term professional support and that’s not for the police to do. Prior to that point, we would be having a discussion with mental health colleagues, people from the Emergency Department and talking about the situation we are dealing with.
‘Jersey must continue to drive a strategy that supports and offers people in crisis the support they need.’
