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Defining and assessing vulnerability within law enforcement and public health organisations: a scoping review

BACKGROUND: Historically, police departments focused solely on criminal justice issues. Recently, there has been a dynamic shift in focus, with Law Enforcement professional groups assuming more responsibility for tackling mental health and distress-related issues (that may arise because of mental he...

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Autores principales: Enang, Iniobong, Murray, Jennifer, Dougall, Nadine, Wooff, Andrew, Heyman, Inga, Aston, Elizabeth
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6717956/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30825016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40352-019-0083-z
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author Enang, Iniobong
Murray, Jennifer
Dougall, Nadine
Wooff, Andrew
Heyman, Inga
Aston, Elizabeth
author_facet Enang, Iniobong
Murray, Jennifer
Dougall, Nadine
Wooff, Andrew
Heyman, Inga
Aston, Elizabeth
author_sort Enang, Iniobong
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Historically, police departments focused solely on criminal justice issues. Recently, there has been a dynamic shift in focus, with Law Enforcement professional groups assuming more responsibility for tackling mental health and distress-related issues (that may arise because of mental health related problems and learning disabilities) alongside Public Health departments. While Law Enforcement has become a ‘last line of support’ and an increasing partner in mental health support, there is partnership working between law enforcement, psychology, and health professions in training and mental health service delivery. The term vulnerability is frequently used across Law Enforcement and Public Health (LEPH) to identify those in need of these services. Effective vulnerability assessment is therefore expected to prevent unintentional harmful health and criminal justice consequences and manage the negative impact of such in cases where prevention is not possible. This scoping review aimed to identify how vulnerability is defined and assessed across LEPH organisations. RESULTS: Vulnerability is context-specific from a Law Enforcement perspective, and person-specific from a Public Health perspective. Definitions of vulnerability are at best fragmented, while models for assessing vulnerability lack uniformity across LEPH. The implications are two-fold. For “vulnerable groups”, the lack of an evidence-based definition and assessment model could prevent access to relevant LEPH services, exacerbating issues of multiple vulnerabilities, co-morbidity, and/or dual diagnosis. All could inadvertently enable social exclusion of vulnerable groups from political discourse and policy interventions. The lack of consistency regarding vulnerability may result in reactive crisis responses as opposed to proactive preventative measures. CONCLUSIONS: This scoping review exposes the complexities associated with defining and assessing vulnerability from a LEPH perspective, which are perceived and prioritised differently across the organizations. Future research must bridge this gap. Building on the establishment of a definition of vulnerability within the empirical literature, researchers ought to engage with service users, LEPH staff, and those engaged in policy making to craft effective vulnerability definitions and assessment models. Only through evidence based, co-produced definitions and assessment models for vulnerability can we ensure that best-practice, but also meaningful and feasible practice, in vulnerability assessment can be achieved.
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spelling pubmed-67179562019-09-06 Defining and assessing vulnerability within law enforcement and public health organisations: a scoping review Enang, Iniobong Murray, Jennifer Dougall, Nadine Wooff, Andrew Heyman, Inga Aston, Elizabeth Health Justice Research Article BACKGROUND: Historically, police departments focused solely on criminal justice issues. Recently, there has been a dynamic shift in focus, with Law Enforcement professional groups assuming more responsibility for tackling mental health and distress-related issues (that may arise because of mental health related problems and learning disabilities) alongside Public Health departments. While Law Enforcement has become a ‘last line of support’ and an increasing partner in mental health support, there is partnership working between law enforcement, psychology, and health professions in training and mental health service delivery. The term vulnerability is frequently used across Law Enforcement and Public Health (LEPH) to identify those in need of these services. Effective vulnerability assessment is therefore expected to prevent unintentional harmful health and criminal justice consequences and manage the negative impact of such in cases where prevention is not possible. This scoping review aimed to identify how vulnerability is defined and assessed across LEPH organisations. RESULTS: Vulnerability is context-specific from a Law Enforcement perspective, and person-specific from a Public Health perspective. Definitions of vulnerability are at best fragmented, while models for assessing vulnerability lack uniformity across LEPH. The implications are two-fold. For “vulnerable groups”, the lack of an evidence-based definition and assessment model could prevent access to relevant LEPH services, exacerbating issues of multiple vulnerabilities, co-morbidity, and/or dual diagnosis. All could inadvertently enable social exclusion of vulnerable groups from political discourse and policy interventions. The lack of consistency regarding vulnerability may result in reactive crisis responses as opposed to proactive preventative measures. CONCLUSIONS: This scoping review exposes the complexities associated with defining and assessing vulnerability from a LEPH perspective, which are perceived and prioritised differently across the organizations. Future research must bridge this gap. Building on the establishment of a definition of vulnerability within the empirical literature, researchers ought to engage with service users, LEPH staff, and those engaged in policy making to craft effective vulnerability definitions and assessment models. Only through evidence based, co-produced definitions and assessment models for vulnerability can we ensure that best-practice, but also meaningful and feasible practice, in vulnerability assessment can be achieved. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2019-03-01 /pmc/articles/PMC6717956/ /pubmed/30825016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40352-019-0083-z Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Research Article
Enang, Iniobong
Murray, Jennifer
Dougall, Nadine
Wooff, Andrew
Heyman, Inga
Aston, Elizabeth
Defining and assessing vulnerability within law enforcement and public health organisations: a scoping review
title Defining and assessing vulnerability within law enforcement and public health organisations: a scoping review
title_full Defining and assessing vulnerability within law enforcement and public health organisations: a scoping review
title_fullStr Defining and assessing vulnerability within law enforcement and public health organisations: a scoping review
title_full_unstemmed Defining and assessing vulnerability within law enforcement and public health organisations: a scoping review
title_short Defining and assessing vulnerability within law enforcement and public health organisations: a scoping review
title_sort defining and assessing vulnerability within law enforcement and public health organisations: a scoping review
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6717956/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30825016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40352-019-0083-z
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