Tayside Police - Equality and Diversity

Around 20% of the population is said to have a disability. We recognise that it is often the social barriers rather than a person's medical condition or impairment that disables them. Some of these barriers are invisible and not easily recognised.

We want to ensure that people with disabilities have the same chance to access our services and to work for us as those who have no disabilities.

That is why we are keen to involve our community and staff members with different types of disabilities, their carers, support organisations and those with relevant expertise or interest in the subject, to ensure that we get it right. We will continue to support this approach by further developing our staff and community involvement methods.

Changes in 2005 to the Disability Discrimination Act, which requires public bodies to publish a Disability Equality Scheme, have given us a chance to further promote equality between disabled and non-disabled staff and service users.

We will adopt a positive pro-active approach, and put disability equality at the heart of our decision-making, activities and services. Just some of the initiatives currently in place include

Appropriate Adults Tayside
Appropriate Adults Tayside is a multi-agency service with a Steering Group chaired by the Assistant Chief Constable, which exists to provide a service to adults who have a mental disorder to facilitate communication between such an adult and a police officer in interview situations where the adult is a victim, witness, suspect or accused.

Divisional Disability Lay Advisory Groups
These advisory groups were formed in May 2006 in the three local authority areas of Angus, Dundee and Perth & Kinross. Membership includes community members with different types of disabilities, carers, or people who have an awareness of and an interest in the subject. The voluntary and community sector as well as disability support services are all well represented. Effort has been made to ensure that the membership of these groups reflects aspects of diversity such as age (by including younger and older persons), race, faith, gender (includes men and women) and the LGBT community.

Officer Verification Scheme (OVS)
This project was developed in 2003 in order to enable people who are blind or visually impaired to seek assurance as to whether an attending officer is genuine. Every officer that is likely to come into contact with the public carries a card that has the words Tayside Police and a special phone number in large print on one side and Braille on the other. A Sergeant in the Force Communication Centre will answer any calls to that number. He or she will be able to confirm whether or not the officer at the caller's address is in fact a Tayside Police officer and if so also confirm their identity. OVS is intended to help build confidence and a feeling of personal safety of any community member who may have doubts about the identity of a person who may present themselves as a Tayside Police officer.

The Tayside Joint Police Board have also published their own Disability Equality Scheme, which can be downloaded from their publications page.

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