FORTY per cent of people calling York's crisis line are not having their calls initially picked up.

The figures have been revealed as North Yorkshire Police’s chief constable admitted that systems were "not set up" to deal with people in crisis.

And it comes as police across the country have laid out plans to drastically reduce the number of mental health callouts dealt with by officers, putting the onus back onto healthcare staff.

At a Health and Wellbeing Board meeting on July 25, the board’s chair Cllr Jo Coles described the York statistic as “a worrying indicator,” adding “that is 40 per cent of people who are potentially ringing 999".

Zoe Campbell, managing director at Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation, said: “People who have phoned for support might not get picked up straight away but they will get a callback.”

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Ms Campbell admitted people are having to call “multiple times” but “this is due to capacity".

“The crisis teams don’t just deliver telephone support, they actually deliver face-to-face crisis services as well,” she said.

“We’re carrying a lot of vacancies within the crisis team, something around 24 whole-time equivalent vacancies.

“There have been repeated attempts to recruit into those teams but unfortunately they haven’t been successful.

“So when we have face-to-face crises, the crisis team will get called to deal with the face-to-face because that is the most urgent priority, which means there’s less capacity to answer the telephone calls.”

Meanwhile, some people are not phoning appropriate services when facing difficult situations.

Lisa Winward, chief constable of North Yorkshire Police, said: “We employ mental health triage nurses in the control room at the police station for exactly this reason because people do call the police.

York Press: Chief Constable Lisa WinwardChief Constable Lisa Winward

“Sometimes they call the police before they even try to get through to [the crisis] line.”

A productivity review is due to be submitted to the Home Secretary this year and will focus on measuring the demands on policing, including mental health demand.

Furthermore, Right Care, Right Person (RCRP) was rolled out in January, which moved responsibilities from police when a mental health call does not immediately threaten the caller’s life.

“RCRP is not about the police reducing demand and not responding when somebody is in crisis to the point where police have a role to play,” the chief constable said.

“There are people who call the police in crisis, quite rightly, and the police are the right agency because we are there to protect life.

“And those individuals are so at risk of threat to their life at that moment in time, it’s absolutely right for the police to respond.

“I think the issue for us is that subsequently when we support that person into the system, the system is not there to support that person.

“So the first issue for us is that cyclical crisis that person ends up in because once that person has contact with any of our agencies they should never [have to] come into contact with us again in a crisis situation.

“And that is happening over and over again because the system, and it’s not the staff’s fault, is not set up for it.”