HEALTH bosses are pleased with the progress being made by specially-trained police permanently stationed at Blackburn’s emergency department.

The team of three have identified 19 people who have repeatedly attended Royal Blackburn Hospital, and begun taking steps to tackle the ‘root causes’ of their problems.

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The £80,000 pilot project was launched in April following frustration at the number of police call-outs to the Haslingden Road site to deal with anything from missing people to safeguarding cases and drunk and abusive patients.

There were 460 such incidents at the hospital in the project’s first four months, of which more than 100 related to 19 individuals.

The team has been working closely with those people to find out what their problems are and to ensure they get the right help.

Debbie Nixon, chief operating officer at Blackburn with Darwen Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “The officers have basically taken on responsibility for the problems and are helping coordinate the different support services, whether that be mental health, social care, housing or charity’s that can help with loneliness.”

She said the police were best placed to do this as they were already ‘grounded in the community’, and have the best skill set to link in different agencies.

Although the officers are still on hand to deal with violence against staff, which has been an increasing problem in recent years, Justin Srivastava, a chief inspector at Lancashire Constabulary, said this was ‘not the rationale for this project’. Other towns and cities have had police stationed in emergency wards at weekends and during the festive period but the Blackburn scheme is thought to be the most extensive in the country.

Neil Smith, consultant leading the scheme, said: “This project is really ahead of the curve in terms of intervention and getting better outcomes for people.

“Austerity has meant money being pulled out of preventative work, and I’ve got to say this is miles further ahead of the work I’m seeing in other areas of the country. Other parts of Lancashire are now looking at this.”

Lancashire Constabulary has declined requests to interview the officers.