Ex 999/101 police dispatcher AMA

[Dlah]

Ask away :)

How do you get into that line of work? What sort of experience and skills do you need?

Dispatcher or call handler?

Did you take the 999/101 calls, or work in the control room sending available units to jobs?

I have a friend who’s a dispatcher and he says he doesn’t deal with the callers themselves, just has like a computer chess board with the 999/101 jobs he needs to send police to.

Makes a difference as to what questions I would ask!

hello! Thanks for doing this.

I'm wondering what records are held for people in the medical sense - if any. I worry about my elderly mum. We have had to call 999 for her a couple of times in the last few years. If she is alone when she has to make a call and can't explain herself, would they have a record of the phone number/address and know there's a vulnerable person there?

She doesn't want an alarm of any kind.

Do you get many people calling up to just ‘log’ things with you?

@EskeewdBeef no set qualifications per say, just evidence of good customer skills, typing and the ability to keep your call. You go through 4 weeks full time classroom training, followed by 6 weeks in company with a tutor.

Just look on your local forces website - it'll say call handler/dispatcher/communications officer - all same thing pretty much!

ugh sorry I missed that it was "police"

I need to send myself to bed!! Sorry OP.

@bluebluezoo I was officially a communications officer so did both! You could spend part of a shift taking calls and the other sending officers out, added some variety!

@RosaWaiting depending on the circumstances they would put history markers on an address ie 'elderly resident, unable to speak, suffers from X, key safe number . . ' but that's normally for the more regular callers. Generally it's just ascertain what we can, view any previous cal history and go from there

@GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat ALL the time!

Thanks OP.

ALL the time!

Are they all mumsnetters?

Rosa I’m ex ambulance call taker and dispatch.

You can request a ribbon attached to the home phone number such as vulnerable patient, regular caller etc* we would still need to ask questions to qualify the call but it would help.

Google your local control centre - I don’t know exactly how to manage it but it’s doable for where I worked. Best wishes

My question; do Pol dislike Ambo as much as the rumours say? 😆

Do you do both 999 and 101 calls?

And is it just for your local area, like do you get the same people calling a lot?
I've phoned 101 to report lots of things on behalf of my school and I've got through to the same lady a few times, and the last time she said she remembered speaking to me before and the vague detail of the call which I was surprised by!

Cheeky thank you, much appreciated.

When people call 'just to log things' what do you say? Do you log things?

Rosa it wasn’t much but if you don’t get very far please PM me if you want to and I’ll see if I can help in anyway.

Have you ever had a positive call? Like with a great outcome?

Did the work affect your mental health?

Ooh this is interesting as did exactly the same job until I was made redundant 2 years ago! I still miss it

@CheekyFuckersDontGetPastMe well . . 😉 haha no in all seriousness there's no hate there, maybe a dislike to ambulances constant script reading, in the nicest sense, ie if we rang sometimes it was third party from control, not on scene and only had basics to pass but they'd still asking 'is patient breathing' etc even if you advised you were not on scene and had no direct details! But no, think they were fully appreciated for what they do

@ASauvignonADay yes you take both, they generally have so many people on a dedicated 9's line but if they're all on calls and more come through it'll ring to the 101 operators and take priority but all exactly same people/training in same room.

The calls come through from nearest mast so normally local area however 9's will bounce to other counties if issues with their own or if on the border of two counties

@JellyMouldJnr a contact record is taken, ie an log number can be given and it's simply that, what they want logging kept on the system

@SneakyGremlins positive yes in the sense we got a good outcome which was always great to know you'd helped someone, ie talking people down from self harming on calls etc, very worthwhile

I used to do this job too!!

If you are ex, why did you leave? Interested to see if the environment is the same as ours.