Coping Strategies

All our staff who have contact with CP have six-monthly psychological assessments. I think that is common/ a pre-requisite amongst similar companies and HTCUs when dealing with such material?

Luckily no one from QCC has been carted off in a straight jacket. Yet.

wink

I call for a second opinion! twisted

6 monthly? Wow, thought it would be more common than that - I thought it would be monthly or similar.

Would be interesting to see whether assessments under Health and Safety etc would be applicable to those companies with four or less employees.

Hi,

The effects of seeing CP on a computer can be very unpleasant. The worst type is often video files where there is sound to accompany the images.

I've had disturbing cases where there has been very little and sometimes even no CP. Hands on abuse cases where your suspect is bragging to a fellow paedophile via chat about what he has done can be worse than seeing images. Sometimes it's paedophilic stories (which aren't an offence themselves to possess in the UK), can be very graphic.

Like Jonathan we also have 6 monthly appointments with a psychologist but I don't think it's these sessions that put us right with the world. We need to be able to deal with what we see, hear and read on a daily basis. Each person has there own way of dealing with it but it must come down the employer to provide a suitably 'sterile' environment and working practices which will limit the possible negative effects.

I don't know if this job is something that certain people couldn't do. More likely it is wouldn't want to do rather than couldn't. It isn't like this field is better paid than other areas of IT, so choosing it must be based purely on the type of work we do.

CP doesn't often bother me and even in the early days it didn't. However, I sometimes wonder how the real life victims of cases I have dealt with are coping after suffering the abuse. In the same way when we see images of people dying in places such as Sudan, as an investigator it is possible to feel that grief or sorrow for the victims of abuse.

The process of following correct procedures in every case helps maintain our objectivity despite the potential stresses of CP. The victims and suspects of the cases we work on are owed a fair and truthful evaluation of the evidence. Keeping that in mind to a great extent enables us to work without distraction or bias.

Steve

That was a good post Steve862.

Excellent post Steve. I fully agree with everything you said.

I tend to find that when viewing the CP I am looking at it as a Crime Scene Is it illegal, is it good evidence, is there anything in the image that will allow me to identify anyone etc etc. I dont actually think I look at the content of the picture if you see what I mean.

As to welfare. in our force there are only two of us do the job so we are quite easy for them to look after. We have a chat and a cuppa every 12 months or so with a counsellor to make sure we are not crazy. The other policies are we can have a weeks stress break once a year at one of the Police convalesence homes (Auchterader in Scotland is my favourite). If at any stage through the day we decide we have had enough then we can just get up and go home. All in all we are looked after well, at least in psychological effect s side of things

Just as a reference, the latest version of the APCO Guidelines includes a section on this, not in any great detail, just a page worth starting on page 29 "Welfare in the Workplace" and advises such

Individuals who are exposed to images of sexual abuse
on a regular basis should attend a psychological support
scheme. A minimum of one session per year should be
considered and group or individual sessions may be
appropriate or a combination of both of these.

Consider, too, a protocol for 24-hour access
to occupational health and restrict access to the
environment where these images are being viewed.

So minimum of 1 session a year, and 24 hour access to psyc support.

I've been thinking about this a bit and there are two things that have come to mind …

Has anyone had _preparatory_ psyc support because of advance knowledge that the job they were going to do that was going to be unpleasant ? If so, do you think that it was of any benefit ? And/Or those who haven't, do you think that you might have been better prepared beforehand ?

And secondly

I assume that LE have access to good occupational health departments, how do commercials deal with this issue ? Are there specialists ? Is it a Yellow Pages matter ? And can anyone recommend a good specialist/s ?

Thanks,

azrael