Nurse and police initiative cuts number of people sectioned under Mental Health Act

An initiative in the north of England where mental health nurses accompany the police on call outs has seen the number of patients being sectioned under the mental health act cut by 89%, a conference heard.

The Operation Emblem street triage team was set up by two community psychiatric nurses from 5 Boroughs Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Cheshire Police following a significant increase in the number of Section 136 arrests across Warrington and Cheshire.

Speaking at the Celebrating Mental Health and Learning Disability Nursing conference in Manchester last week, psychiatric nurse Jane Murphy said the early intervention initiative had not only improved patient care, it had also saved hundreds of thousands of pounds in unnecessary costs.

'In 2012 there were 450 Section 136 arrests across Cheshire and Warrington at a cost of about £750,000 to the public purse. But only 30% of those arrests were eventually detained and those same patients kept getting arrested over and over again, so something was obviously going wrong.

'We launched Operation Emblem in November 2013 and in the first week we prevented 15 Section 136 detentions. It was phenomenal.

‘By intervening early and providing specialist advice at the scene we have managed to cut the number of potential Section 136 arrests by 89% since we launched, saving approximately £2,000 a time.’

Ms Murphy explained that sharing patient information between the police and the nurses had been an essential part of the project, enabling them to direct patients to appropriate services after their crisis.

After a successful pilot, which ran from December 2013 to March 2014, the team were able to secure £90,000 funding from the two local clinical commissiong groups and Cheshire Police, to extend the project until the end of this month.

Ms Murphy is hoping an independent evaluation, which is currently being carried out, will secure the future of the multidisciplinary approach.

Operation Emblem is one of the finalists in the mental health category of the Nursing Standard Awards. To view all the award finalists click here