Getting help from police stations

Alec Dickson

Trouble occurs in families, for obvious reasons, in the evenings and at weekends - precisely when departments of social services are closed and their duty officers extraordinarily difficult to contact. On the other hand, the police, whose stations are virtually the only government offices open day and night, are sometimes still rather reluctant to get involved in domestic quarrels.

'The police, whose stations are virtually the only government offices open day and night, are sometimes still reluctant to get involved in domestic quarrels'

Suppose a police station in a deprived area were to make available a small interviewing room to be staffed by third year students of social work (who would be able to contact the social services duty officers) and to whom distraught people could be referred by the desk officers initially. If the 'trouble' appeared to be serious and urgent, eg abuse of a child, the social work student could then request the station sergeant to send a car around to the house.

The results might be:

(a) Distressed citizens would receive assistance; (b) The police themselves would be relieved to a large extent of domestic problems, to concentrate on crime; (c) Social workers in training would receive a baptism of fire and acquire experience of sharing problems with the police; (d) People in the neighbourhood would come to view the police station as a place from which help could be sought - which is surely one aim of police policy today.

Alec Dickson, 19 Blenheim Road, London W4 1VB (tel 081 944 7437).

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