Kieran Hitchenson was among multiple union delegates from ACTAS who mentioned issues with workload, communication and police support.
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00:00What are some of the challenges ACTAS has been experiencing in recent years?
00:05We've got ongoing challenges with keeping up with workload and percentage
00:10increase in that workload which is ongoing and it goes back through history.
00:15We're also struggling on the front line to to make informed decisions, patient
00:23centred informed decisions around patient specific needs given that we have no
00:30information. We've only got the information provided during the call.
00:34Have there been instances where ambulance needs support from police and they haven't got it?
00:40Yeah, there's ongoing issues with situations where we know we need to attend to a patient
00:49because of many different scenarios but there's issues with violence or history of violence
01:00or potential violence and we find ourselves sitting on scene for hours offline waiting to gain access
01:08to the patients, waiting for support from police. As I said, the front line officers are usually unaware
01:17of therapists but it causes issues not just for us, the police, but also members of the public.
01:25We've been in discussions service to service for some time now trying to resolve these issues
01:32especially our response to mental health and occupational violence within our workforce
01:39but we haven't seen to get anywhere with it.