A vast logistical and cultural challenge

The police have become the default agency for responding to a wide range of social problems, including physical and mental health incidents. Having police attend to medical emergencies can do more harm than good, including over-criminalizing mental health conditions, when the situation instead calls for specialist care. The force also receives a significant volume of calls regarding concerns about the welfare of children or elderly people, many of which another agency, such as social services, would be better equipped to respond to.

In July 2023, the UK government announced an ambitious plan to overhaul 999 and 101 call handling across England and Wales. The new approach, “Right Care, Right Person” (RCRP), aims to ensure that a vulnerable person gets the right support from the most appropriate service for their needs, while also freeing up officer hours for preventing and solving crime.

One British police force faced a huge challenge in implementing RCRP. It receives a large volume of calls daily – with many of them health-related. It also faced ambitious timelines, hesitancy and fears from partners about rising demand, and media scrutiny suggesting that the police would be “abandoning” those in need.

In addition, this force had to undergo a major cultural shift. Control room staff needed to be trained and frontline officers also had to be prepared for the new policy.

The force engaged Capgemini to realize sustainable change by embedding its team in the live operational environment, instilling new ways of working and consulting internal and external stakeholders to foster buy-in across the system.

Rewiring systems and culture for long-lasting change

RCRP’s success hinged on bringing stakeholders on board, both within the force and from other emergency services and partner agencies. Force leaders worked with Capgemini’s policing experts and communication and engagement specialists to articulate the changes and benefits to all.

Together, the force and Capgemini developed training that, in four hours, would equip operators with the information required to make legally compliant deployment decisions. They also developed impactful digital content for frontline officers. This was followed by tailored multi-channel scenario-based communications and training to reinforce policy complexities. The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has since endorsed this training as national best practice.

The partners provided 24/7 on-site support for call center staff, guiding operators through the digital RCRP toolkit to aid decision making and running through scenarios to build confidence. From logged interactions and performance data, they identified emerging needs to which they tailored ongoing multi-channel communications and support.

The police force and Capgemini worked closely with Command and Control Centre personnel and frontline leadership to ensure a smooth transition, developing internal capabilities to ensure performance could be sustained. They upskilled individuals to act as subject matter experts and empowered them to confidently manage queries and escalations.

After the launch of RCRP, the partners continuously monitored performance data to drive remedial action, and equipped Command and Control Centre supervisors and SMEs to coach those needing further support.

Delivering better support for the community

RCRP has enabled a system-wide step-change to improve local public service provisions, both ensuring that individuals receive the right care and generating a vast range of downstream benefits for the police force, its partners, and the broader citizenry. The partners’ work has been lauded by the force’s RCRP and mental health lead as “instrumental” to the project’s successful and safe delivery.

The policy-led behavior change is one of the force’s top time saving initiatives, saving 140,000+ frontline officer hours in the first four months alone or the equivalent capacity of 48 officers on every shift of every day – time that can be reinvested in core policing services.

The project also boosted the morale of staff and officers, who report that they can now focus on the critical policing matters that inspired them to sign up in the first place. Time-consuming handovers from response officers to medical professionals have been reduced, with targets of 1-hour handovers now in place when police are involved, while there has been a 67% decrease in external requests for welfare checks.

Over the same period, the culture shift has led to 800 fewer Section 136 detentions, with benefits for the welfare of mental health patients.

The benefits for all local residents have been recognized at the highest level, receiving praise from its leadership.

“Implementing RCRP is a significant challenge for policing, both culturally and operationally. The Capgemini team assigned to support implementation were instrumental in all aspects of the project…They routinely anticipated operational challenges, presenting solutions before issues were raised. This ensured no milestones were missed and RCRP delivered within the ambitious timescales set, which required the utmost professionalism and forensic focus. Their oversight and coordination of the ‘floorwalking’ capability was particularly impressive.

This provision provided confidence to call handlers who were faced with significant cultural changes in how the force assigns officers to calls. In summary: Capgemini were instrumental in the successful and safe delivery of RCRP, which is currently saving the force more than 1000 policing hours per day.”