I have had a real sense for a long while that those of us concerned about Right Care, Right Person are absolutely losing the argument. But then I realised something last night and feel in to a deep and peaceful sleep for the first time this week.
There isn’t an argument, is there?! – perhaps I forgot to pay my five pounds to John Cleese but no-one will discuss this in anything other than the shallowest terms and plenty of people who do talk about it will not give straight-forward unambiguous answers to relevant questions. Some even present on this after making it clear they will not accept questions, which is unusual conduct for a conference and we can see others just ignoring questions.
Incredible.
What we have instead is an entirely unevaluated programme (let’s not pretend the Home Office publication from December 2024 is an evaluation worth the name) and it has been widely rolled out without anyone really understanding its real-world impact, or its contradictions and inconsistencies. Senior police officers involved refuse to discuss it and that should concern us all – something about Feynman preferring “questions without answers to answers without questions”?
THE TIMES REPORTS
This week, The Times’s chief reporter, Fiona Hamilton published two articles about Right Care, Right Person – the first was about the programme itself; the second relating to my experience in my former force. I was concerned enough about RCRP when I was serving to raise concerns with the force lead on RCRP. She merely assured me it would all be well without asking specifically why I was concerned.
Message received loud and clear: obviously none of my business and not open for discussion.
Having then been obliged to grapple with training materials from Humberside Police and the College of Policing, I had concern about their legal accuracy, so I flagged them up and received no substantive response from the force or the College. I did receive a response on this point from the Home Office, having also written to them. Helpfully, they sought a response from the College about a particular question in the eLearning I had used as an example of errors. The question asked about a “voluntary” patient who had been reported “Absent Without Leave” and invited officers to answer either “yes” or “no” to whether the situation was a police matter.
The problem here is: voluntary patients cannot be AWOL, by law – AWOL is a legal condition reserved only for detained or “sectioned” patients under the MHA and cannot apply to voluntary patients. The answer to the question must then be “I cannot answer this yet – I need to ring the hospital for legal clarity”. In the Home Office response, the College had assured them this question was not a mistake, but deliberately framed to cause those taking the training to seek more information. But it being an eLearning package with only “yes” or “no” as options, you can’t click anything other than “yes” or “no” and cannot move the IT beyond the question without doing so. There was no other option and when you tick “no” (which they obviously wanted you to do), you’re told you got the question correct and you move to the next. And ticking “no” based just on the information in the question is reckless, to say the least and in some specific circumstances could easily lead to risks to the patient or public.
But message received loud and clear: obviously none of my business and not open for discussion.
IN THE REAL WORLD
As I started to see Preventing Future Death reports emerge and after being alarmed by being literally ignored whilst trying to raise risks to human life and obvious potential for legal breaches, I became concerned enough to put it all into a thirteen-page report to an Assistant Chief Constable – escalating to that level for a few different reasons. After routine acknowledgement by a staff officer the report had been received, I had no further response despite the report making clear it would be the final action I took before going outside of WMP.
A few months after I submitted that report, a man died in Birmingham which led, in December 2024, to a PFD notice being published. Amongst other things, the Coroner asked within it whether the mistake (of closing an incident log without action) was individual error in that specific case or something more systemic? The WMP response to that PFD is also published on the Chief Coroner’s website and if you look very carefully in an over-long response, it puts the problem down to individual error, somewhat surprisingly. I was surprised because of other incident logs I’d seen during my service where call handlers had made similar errors and where police supervisors had doubled-down on it – examples available.
But message received loud and clear: obviously none of my business and not open for discussion.
When Fiona Hamilton offered opportunity to comment upon my escalation to very senior level being entirely ignored. The force responded with a press release, interestingly from an officer less senior than the person to whom I’d directed the report. The force executive obviously not interested in responding about the executive ignoring warnings. A named Chief Superintendent ignored the questions put to them about my report, their view on my warnings and the fact certain subsequent deaths of the kind I had predicted had led to a number of Preventing Future Deaths reports, including two for their particular police force.
Instead we were treated to a short, generic explanation of what RCRP was intending to achieve (which wasn’t unclear or in doubt at all) and some entirely unevidenced, generalised claims about its impact on the public and partnerships but it was somewhat validating to see they didn’t even attempt to deny my allegation senior officers fully ignored a formal escalation of risks which correctly anticipated it could contribute to a loss of life and adverse PFD notices.
Message received loud and clear: obviously none of my business and not open for discussion.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND CULTURE
Post-publication on Friday, social media discussion going and I don’t want to over-emphasise this because there was much less of it than I thought there might be. What did emerge had a couple of themes to it. Officers who were unfamiliar with the cases used by Fiona Hamilton to make her point, responded that it was not for the police to do the jobs of mental health or social services and people kept conflating the (correct) need to decline certain calls received with the obligation to still attend those calls Chief Constables had reassured the public they would – the “immediate risk” calls which remain legal responsibilities.
In one example about the death of Sophie Cotton, an officer asked why social services had not attended her address themselves rather than just ringing the police? Awkward: social services in Durham had visited Sophie’s address before ringing the police and that information was in the public domain. Others characterised it as “the police doing other people’s jobs” (or similar). Also awkward: the force itself acknowledge during Sophie’s inquest their duty to attend had been triggered by the 2nd of the 4 four phone calls for assistance which were all declined.
Message received loud and clear: obviously none of my business and not open for discussion.
But the most incredible response on social media came from a Chief Constable – bearing in mind the example used in Fiona’s article was an incident the police themselves had acknowledged triggered their responsibility to act and where they had failed to do so, causing a Coroner to argue other deaths may follow. She also used an example where a family are making a similar allegation after a tragedy yet to reach inquest. So to see such a senior officer say this –
“This is a problem we must crack and agencies which do have the expertise need to step up … the only way to break the cycle is perhaps for policing leadership to start to say, we are not doing this anymore, our job is to fight crime and catch criminals.”
Was he unaware of the facts of these cases? – and if so, why comment at all when it risks sounding at best, somewhat ignorant?! And if he was aware of the facts – that a police force had admitted their responsibility to respond had been triggered – in what sense is it appropriate to say “We are not doing this anymore!” or anything similar?! I can’t overlook “our job is to fight crime and catch criminals” either, I’m afraid – that’s just a part of your job and pushing that viewpoint to your officers does damage. It’s deeply over-simplistic. I suspect undergraduates characterising policing in only those terms would fail their module and face a re-sit.
But message received loud and clear: obviously none of my business and not open for discussion.
IN THE NEXT LIFE
So what next?
We are assured by various bodies like the Home Office, NPCC that forces do sit down to examine PFD notices issued by coroners and learn lessons. I’m not sure I’m yet reassured by this, however – analysis of the fifteen RCRP relevant PFDs and knowledge of several deaths yet to reach inquest suggest one over-arching theme of contention and it’s the one exemplified in Sophie Cotton’s case: of under-responsiveness to risk after under-recognition of the “immediate risk” criteria for article 2 and article 3 ECHR obligations.
If the “lessons learned” claim were true, then why do we continue to see the same copycat incidents across different police forces? Chief Constable Rachel Bacon, from Durham Constabulary, responded to Fiona highlighting the Sophie Cotton case in Durham by saying the police “will always respond” to the “immediate risk” situations. Yet she did this in a context of Fiona highlighting a case where that very police force, under that Chief Constable did not, in fact, respond to immediate risk criteria, after failing to recognise them. Hard to insist you will always do something if you’ve just been found not to be doing it.
But message received loud and clear: obviously none of my business and not open for discussion.
This concludes a year of attempting to flag problems seen by so many people, not just by me, which we think put people at risk – and the submission is, the evidence is sufficiently there to show it for reasons which have been specifically outlined to the right people. I’ll now get on with my new job, yet again content I’ve done all I can to make the argument but whilst left with the uncertainty of knowing whether it was ever received or understood because no-one would respond – I remain open to learning why my take on this is wrong.
The blog menu (top right) has a link to an email function me if anyone wants to put the argument.
Awarded the President’s Medal, by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Winner of the Mind Digital Media Award
All opinions expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation.
(c) Michael Brown, 2025
I am not a police officer.
I try to keep this blog up to date, but inevitably over time, amendments to the law as well as court rulings and other findings from inquests and complaints processes mean it is difficult to ensure all the articles and pages remain current. Please ensure you check all legal issues in particular and take appropriate professional advice where necessary.
Government legislation website – www.legislation.gov.uk
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