Cambridgeshire Police Federation chair Liz Groom has vowed to continue introducing initiatives to improve officer welfare after being returned unopposed for another three-year term of office.
Liz, who became chair in 2017 after serving for a year as vice-chair, said the branch now put a stronger emphasis on officer wellbeing and she wanted to build on recent successes with the help of the executive and workplace representatives.
She said: “I think since I became chair we are far more welfare driven as a council. We now have two welfare caravans – the second moved forwards by our branch secretary Scott Houghton – provide free tickets for our officers to get some respite from work and deliver welfare hampers to officers who are seriously ill and injured.
“We have also supported team building initiatives, things like cooking hot dogs at New Year.”
Liz said one of her biggest achievements as chair was securing training and awareness of post-incident procedures (PIP) for recruits and making sure all new officers receive this training before they hit the streets.
She also said the use of social media to keep members up to date had also improved in recent years.
“We now engage with social media, of course, and we now always send officers to the bravery awards,” added Liz, “We hardly ever sent a nominee before which was strange as our officers do brave things every day.
“I think we have a more engaged membership as a result of all this.”
Liz said she was looking forward to continuing working with Scott.
“We make a good team,” she added, “Over the next three years I want to build on that work around welfare with the help of our exec and workplace reps. We can be more visible at stations with engagement events and we are always thinking of new ways and initiatives to help our members get some respite from the demands and challenges of their day to day role, which have only increased since the onset of the pandemic.”