Preventing crises in the midst of a global pandemic: responsiveness, participation and equity in policing and public health partnerships during COVID-19

ABSTRACT

In recent years, individuals suffering from severe and multiple disadvantage (SMD) have become an explicit target for policy and a new wave of partnerships bringing together the police, local authorities, mental health and social care with third sector organisation has been trying to develop new ways of supporting them. This paper focuses on one of these partnerships and reconstructs how the Covid-19 outbreak impacted on efforts to embed responsiveness, participation and equity into the governance structure of the newly-established partnership. An advisory group bringing together individuals with personal experience of SMD was involved in the identification of the priorities to be pursued. However, the first lockdown and the requirement to house all rough sleepers forced the partnership to abandon them to focus on housing. Complications also emerged in attempts made to embed participation in the work of the partnership, as the peer mentors lacked the skills and resources necessary to embrace new forms of remote working. Finally, the unexpected depth of the needs in the client group also raised unforeseen complications in terms of how to allocate available support equitably. The case study offers two lessons: first, police can play a strategic role at the local level in tackling vulnerability and disadvantage; second, police and health partnerships need to be considered in terms of theircommitment to democratic values, not just their effectiveness. The paper concludes by offering some broader considerations on the intersection between policing and public health in light of the pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• police and health partnership
• vulnerable individuals
• severe and multiple disadvantage

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Karen Bullock and two anonymous reviewers for providing insightful comments to a previous draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 From February 2020 onwards, all meetings have been taking place remotely via MS teams.

2 Since 2013, public health has been a statutory responsibility of local authorities as per the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

3 The section states that if a person ‘appears to a constable to be suffering from mental disorder and to be in immediate need of care or control’ they can be removed to a place of safety in their own interest or for the protection of others.