Royal Solomon Island Police Force (RSIPF) today (23 August 2018) signed a contract with Empower Pacific for critical incident counselling for Police Officers after they attend critical incidents at work as part of Empower Pacific’s Employment Assistance Programme (EAP) at the National Referral Hospital in Honiara.
RSIPF’s Welfare Coordinator Sergeant (Sgt) John Kulu says, “A critical incident is a sudden and unanticipated event or situation that falls outside of usual day-to-day work of a police officer.”
Welfare Officer Sgt Kulu says, “This can be life-threatening or threatening to the health and physical or emotional safety of officers. Some examples are,
• Injury or threat to employee’s life on duty;
• Victim/body recovery;
• Homicides, suicides;
• Death or serious injury to baby or small child if attending officer have family members of a similar age; and
• High attendance at postmortems.”
Mr Kulu explains, “The RSIPF welfare office will contact officers after they attend these incidents to provide information and make a referral for critical incident counselling if officers require a counselling appointment to debrief the incident and reduce stress symptoms.
“This service will improve RSIPF duty of care to officers and reduce the risk of psychological harm,” says Sgt. Kulu.