PC Jo Carter, who was awarded a long-service medal for dedicating 20 years to the local force, said social media and increasing pressures on the Island’s school-age population were bigger threats to them than drugs, drink or crime.
And, in an in-depth interview on page 8 of today’s JEP, PC Carter talks about her life in the job, the family tragedy that spurs her on and her no-nonsense approach to policing.
According to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service in Jersey, one in ten children aged between five and 16 has a mental-health problem and many may continue to suffer into adulthood. Statistics from the Mental Health Strategy for Jersey (2016-2020) report states that the largest number of referrals to CAMHS in 2013 were from 14-to-17-year-olds. There were a total of 446 referrals.
Asked what she thought the biggest challenge or threat was to young people and whether, given its rise several years ago, it was so-called legal highs or new psychoactive substances, the officer was quick to say mental health.
‘It’s not legal highs, it’s mental health. Mental health is the big one. Police officers here do what they can. We have training, but we are not experts. But it comes down to the Health Department at the end of the day. We should do more to teach children the signs,’ said PC Carter, who is one of five States police school liaison officers.
The Mental Health Strategy report said that one of the elements to improve mental-health care was to make teachers and staff in schools better aware of the signs of mental-health problems in children. It is this element PC Carter says is improving.
‘Things like pressure from exams are much worse now and social media is a factor too. Bullying used to just take place at school, now it goes home too. Children are glued to their phones, they are never without them. Even things like not getting likes on the internet, which sounds stupid to adults, can have a big impact on self-esteem. Mental-health issues among young people is certainly more of a thing now than it was when I started 20 years ago,’ said PC Carter.
The so-called legal-highs craze gripped Jersey in and around 2014. The number of the drugs, which were available to buy online for pocket-money prices, being imported into the Island through the post – often legally – increased massively. Authorities tried to react by amending legislation to make drugs illegal every time new strains were released. Campaigns were launched and several deaths in the Island, including those of some teenagers, were linked to new psychoactive substances.
A blanket ban was introduced in the UK in 2016, which shut down many previously legitimate websites that were selling the drugs. Jersey’s Magistrate Bridget Shaw said this week that, since the blanket ban, cases involving so-called legal highs that appeared before her had become almost ‘non-existent’.
