I’ve had some very enjoyable days these last few months delivering CPD to AMHPs. I’ve covered the north-west of England and north Wales and then used a lunchbreak in one of them to jump in to some online CPD for AMHPs in the north-east of England, something which legal firm DAC Beachcroft have asked me to do a number of times over many years and I’m always grateful to be invited back. Then I’ve had a road trip to south Wales and to north Wales with other sessions elsewhere in coming weeks and early next year.
It’s always really interesting to do CPD and my admiration for AMHPs knows no bounds, given the work they do in unfathomably difficult circumstances – their pay needs doubling, if not tripling, as far as I’m concerned. They’re given all the responsibility and none of the authority to square away really serious stuff and they deserve our respect.
R.A.V.E.
Something happened in the middle of the morning with the north-west AMHPs – as gratifying to me as it was amusing and it really made me smile.
We were talking about how to ensure requests for police support were as likely as possible to achieve the objective of securing it, especially in an RCRP-world where the police are declining requests more often than before. One AMHP explained their system involved a process he really liked and he wondered if I’d heard about it? – it was the “RAVE” process, which he started to explain meant “Resistance …” and then I finished the final three words with him in harmony, “… aggression, violence or escape”.
I haven’t written about “RAVE” in years, but you can see my post from as long ago as 2012 called “RAVE Risks and Litter Collection“. There is also a Quick Guide – “Rave Risks” in my Quick Guide series of posts and the whole idea of this little mnemonic is to aid thinking about police involvement in supporting AMHPs or the NHS. How do we delineate between incidents where support is not necessary from one where it is? I thought about this again recently in light of some ongoing events I’m not going to specify (because of legal proceedings), but it was all about the difference between the legal thresholds for police involvement in some situations where police-only powers may be relevant to a safe outcome.
BACK OF AN ENVELOPE
The RAVE idea came from a meeting where I think I was scribbling on the back of a piece of paper, it might have been the agenda for the meeting but I might have just made that up … there was certainly a long chat about developing a joint protocol in that mental health trust / local authority area and key to it all was the question of whether and when the police should attend MHA assessments in people’s private homes. There had been incidents where the police had declined to attend and support in circumstances where partner professionals believed it was essential to the maintenance of safety so how should we properly delineate?
I started writing down various keywords as people spoke and those four came out amongst them all and in a different order – then I realised you can build a word and make mnemonic if you re-arrange the order in which I’d written them down. Even better, it then seemed to highlight a potentially escalating order of concern: resistance to something is a lower kind of objection that aggression, which is lower than violence, etc. and escape is, presumably, what you’re attempting to avoid by managing and mitigating those three things?
OK, we might have something here – the meeting agreed.
Crucially, the AMHPs and NHS staff seemed to suggest they could not imagine a situation where they would be requesting the police if none of those four things were in play; and further agreed it would be inappropriate to seek police support where they knew they weren’t in play. Remember: most MHA assessments in non-controlled environments (outside of police stations, or mental health units where patients are already detained) do not involve the police.
CHILDREN and SECTION 136
Much more recent events have made me think again about legal thresholds and I’m reminded the threshold for using police powers under the Mental Health Act 1983 or the Children’s Act 1989 is lower than the threshold for RCRP deployment. Said differently, a child or someone experiencing mental distress may be at the point where they require intervention by the police before it becomes a situation involving immediate risk of serious harm or an immediate risk to life but how likely is that to happen if the ITSH and IRTL thresholds are what determine police attendance.
What could go wrong?!
Against that background and after the NW AMHP event, I reflected over the multitude of incidents I attended or was requested to attend as a police officer over 27yrs, various incidents I’m aware of where there was dispute about police attendance and I still think the RAVE idea holds water and it remains used in at least one police force area I’m aware of as their main conduit to determine RCRP issues and the AMHPs there do not complain about the difficulty of securing police attendance – “9 out of 10 times we ask for the police, they turn up.”
So for that reason alone, I thought another post was in order, even if only to re-stake my claim to the idea! – it really was conceived in a MHA Partnership Meeting at Brierley Hill Police Station in Dudley, about fifteen or sixteen years ago and so I enjoyed it being pointed back at me to ask if I’d heard about it.
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
Mental Health Cop 