Who is TeamPolice and how are they promoting police wellbeing?
Thursday, 13 August, 2020
TeamPolice is a scheme run by the police, for the police and is dedicated to promoting and improving wellbeing with our UK police force.
TeamPolice is a brand new, exciting joint-venture by Ethos and Police Sport UK. PSUK is the body responsible for supporting all sporting activities across the UK. It reaches a potential membership of over 300,000 serving police officers, police staff, retired officers and staff, and plays a major role in providing social and recreational activities for the membership.
This scheme is run by the police, for the police and the aim of this collaboration is to raise funds for PSUK. TeamPolice do this by offering a unique annual membership scheme, in which companies become sponsors to receive exclusive brand awareness opportunities. These funds then allow our police forces more opportunities to engage in sport and physical activity, in an effort to improve mental and physical wellbeing. Ethos have had previous success with a similar venture that worked to raise funds for TeamArmy. They focussed on raising funds for the british forces sport and managed to raise over £7million in net charitable donations. Ethos partnered with PSUK with the intention of replicating the success of TeamArmy with our UK police force.
Chief Constable of South Wales Police and Chair of PSUK, Matt Jukes, works closely with TeamPolice and said “PSUK are on a mission to increase the reach and opportunities for the policing community to participate in sport as part of our Wellbeing strategy. We are excited about working with Ethos”.
TeamPolice was initially created to tackle the longstanding issue of police wellbeing. Issues such as, long working hours, high levels of demand, constant public scrutiny, dangerous working environments and stress have always been there, but the long term impacts on our officers physical, emotional and mental health are just now being understood.
Recent surveys have now shone a spotlight on how important promoting and improving wellbeing is. Oscar Kilo, the National Wellbeing service, and the College of Policing recently conducted a survey into the UK police forces wellbeing (Oscar Kilo, 2020). Results showed that although over half of our police force feel job satisfaction, 45% police officers are not getting the recommended amount of sleep, over half report feeling symptoms of post traumatic stress and fatigue seems to be a big issue across the board.
We ask our officers to ‘run towards danger’ so we owe it to them to provide all the necessary support. There is a tremendous amount of evidence that shows active participation in sport and physical activity is a great way to do that. Exercise is widely known to have a number of amazing benefits such as, improving morale, motivation and wellbeing. Increasing the opportunities for police to get involved in sport might mean putting the demands and difficulties of the previous week behind them with the help of a football or rugby match, or taking part in a badminton competition, squash or an athletic event across the force.
‘Wellbeing through sport’ is what TeamPolice is trying to achieve, and they’ve brought together various police industry experts to do this. The team is made up of a number of extremely dedicated retired police officers, chief constables, deputy directors of the NCA and more fantastic people with great first hand police experience. The team is in the position to really understand the current needs of our police forces, including the major need to focus on supporting and promoting wellbeing.
TeamPolice works hard to raise money for PSUK and they do this by attracting sponsors to sign up to their bronze, silver and gold broad tiers of commitment. Sponsorship provides a unique and valuable channel to raise profile and brand awareness for all supporting members. Each sponsor receives a dedicated account manager which helps to tailor different companies sponsorship packages and identify specific needs. This enables sponsors to maximise the benefits from their sponsorship, whilst maintaining high standards of transparency and integrity.
On the one hand, a company might want to sponsor a regional golf tournament or a high profile football match. Or maybe the company wants to support a significant wellbeing initiative or provide branded sports kit and equipment. Sponsors can also attend showcase events, regular sporting fixtures and unique TeamPolice events such as the NPCC Annual Sports & Wellbeing Awards and the TeamPolice Annual Golf Day. These are all seen as good opportunities to network with key industry stakeholders and high ranking police executives. TeamPolice works by approaching different companies to discuss sponsorship options and currently receives support from big names such as Fujitsu, Capita, Police Credit Union, SBL and Hublsoft.
The more sponsors TeamPolice have, the more opportunities our police forces have to improve their wellbeing. If you’re interested in achieving ‘wellbeing through sport’ and would like to sponsor TeamPolice, take a look at their website and social channels below:
Website: www.teampolice.uk
Email: info@teampolice.uk
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TeamPoliceUK
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeamPoliceUK
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/teampolice
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teampoliceuk
Oscar Kilo, 2020: https://oscarkilo.org.uk/fatigue-to-be-tackled-following-first-ever-national-police-wellbeing-survey/
