Joanne Caffrey works throughout the UK and Republic of Ireland for Expert cases, training or consultancy; custody, education and care is her speciality. She has worked as an adviser for BBC Radio4 File on Four investigations and Radio 5 Live Investigations and has delivered training to the IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) regarding police custody. She speaks with Lawyer Monthly this month about what the police force and management for schools can implement, in order to avoid injury, self-harm or death during custody or in education.
What are the common cases you deal with on a common basis? Do you think these have increased over the years?
The cases I currently deal with are either custodial or education settings, and someone gets injured or dies. I have just completed my first full year as an Expert since leaving the police but I was long seen as a custody expert within the police employment.
What do you think could be done to reduce or monitor such cases?
The common errors with the cases are that employers fail to ensure that staff have suitable and sufficient training to deal with complex people. Standard training no longer fits the needs of most service users and refresher training appears to be missing. Bad habits creep into practice and managers are not policing the work place to put things right. For example, with suicides occurring in custody too often, staff are unaware of the risk factors and triggers that increase the likely hood of such events; therefore, a series of control measures fail to happen with prisoners which then present opportunities for self-harm or suicide to be committed. In the schools, most often staff are on close supervision with children with educational needs and disabilities, yet they have received little or no training about the needs they require. Too often than not, training received focuses upon restraining, rather than trying to manage down incidents. Thus, staff with little or no knowledge are having to make dynamic assessments and restrain children with complex needs. Hence things go wrong posing risk to both staff and children who often get hurt.
What do you think accounts towards unjust behaviour during police custody? Are those under the influence of alcohol and drugs more vulnerable and less inclined to not seek action?
Any person under the influence of alcohol, drugs, head injuries, or other medical conditions are at increased risk. Levels of observation were introduced in 2005 to afford safeguards to detainees, but this increases staffing demands. This is added cost and the management teams don’t like further cost implications. Bad habits have crept in and, for example: a detainee under the influence of alcohol who is not incapable, should be visited at least every 30 minutes (minimum), and roused to check they are safe; commonly I see and hear staff are placing these detainees on hourly visits to relieve staffing pressures.
Regarding unjust behaviour in custody – a lot of it is down to a lack of communication. Detainees are placed in a cell and left. With hourly visits, where staff often don’t even speak to the detainee when they visit, provokes the highly stressful situation, similar to a pressure cooker waiting to go off. Then there are head injuries: the non-visible head injuries, which are caused prior or during the arrest, result in potential capillary bleeds affecting the pressure in the head. As it is not visible to staff, it’s essential that close monitoring for behaviour changes takes place in the initial hours of custody. If detainees are feeling unwell their behaviour is also likely to become increasingly unpredictable. I think the complexities of custody are greatly under appreciated by management and safe staffing models for detainee care and attention need to be addressed more than they currently are.
Regarding challenging behaviour in the education sector, what added difficulties are there with cases involving child protection issues?
There is little or no monitoring nationally concerning staff use of force on children. If a staff member wanted to abuse their position it would be so easy to do so. Some schools are conducting disproportionately high levels of restraints on children with no national comparisons to identify schools standing out, although the use of monitoring it would identify staff at increased risk of injury or needing additional training in managing down challenging behaviour, rather than old style training, single dimension, of restraint. I tend to find primary schools restrain more than secondary schools and this is a simple fact that your own safety switch kicks in if you are dealing with a teenager compared to a primary child. Just because you are strong enough to restrain a child does not make it right.
Do you think there could be any changes in regulations in order to help ensure these cases reduce? Moreover, what do you think the police force could do?
The guidance and legislation is there. What is required is the reinforced professional quality training and quality assurance checks with safe staffing levels – safe for the detainees, not just about the staff. I’ve seen a dilution in custody training over the years with trainers having no or little experience of a custody environment. Some trainers I have spoken with have no knowledge of the history of custody training from the Safer Detention and Handling (SDHP) training in 2003 and the deaths in custody which occurred before that, (for example the Christopher Alder death in 1998). I was a custody sergeant when this death occurred and this motivated me in my quest to improve custody safety. I have now secured a CPD accreditation for a 5-day course managing safer custody in my quest to improve custody safety, but it needs to start with managers who have the authority and opportunity to enforce change. Regarding schools, I think the Department of Education needs to start looking at school strategies for managing down challenging behaviour which currently are not commonly in existence.
What do you think could be done to ensure that cases involving self-harm and suicide in prison and/or custody reduce in nature?
Staff in both police and prison sectors do not fully understand about triggers and warning signs for self-harm and suicide. Several reviews have highlighted this over the years and cases I have been involved with also confirm this to still be the case. I have now secured a CPD accreditation for a 1 day course in self-harm and suicide in custody. Prison and police have the procedures and policies there, but the staff and management just don’t understand it.
In what ways are people often misinformed when dealing with the elderly and/or those with disabilities and special educational needs?
I believe many training providers are single focused and teach: ‘if behaviour A happens, respond with restraint A’, but this is not taking into account special educational needs and disabilities or the age of the service user. A one size response does not fit all, plus the demographics of the staff need to be taken into consideration; a young fit 25-year-old member of staff has different capabilities to a 50-year-old. I have a team of specialists working with me from the Special Education Needs and Disability (SEND), Occupational Therapy, Nursing, Geriatric and Sensory Integration worlds. We are able to attend work places and develop person centred behaviour plans from a multi discipline approach and then train the staff accordingly. We work on managing down challenging behaviour. For example, it’s estimated that over 80% of children on the autistic spectrum also have a sensory processing disorder which is not diagnosed, as statutory services struggle to provide this expertise. We are able to identify it and work with it to reduce the likelihood of incidents occurring, thus safeguarding children and staff and enabling all children in the class to focus on their learning without constant interruptions.
I am Joanne Caffrey, an Expert Witness for Safer Custody, Challenging behaviour and use of force. My Expert business is Joanne Caffrey Expert www.joannecaffreyexpert.co.uk and my training company is Total Train www.totaltrain.co.uk .
I was a police officer for 24 years and specialised in safer detention and handling of detained people in custody. I wrote the initial national training package for safer custody and achieved national awards for my training in these areas.
I currently work with over 300 schools concerning managing challenging behaviour and I have worked as an Expert on a variety of cases including:
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Suicide in prison
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Handcuff injuries
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Police custody procedures
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Staff injured in schools
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Children injured in schools
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Nurses assaulted in secure units
Joanne Caffrey
Expert Witness
