How would you answer this question - Police Force

[Lorddenning1]

Ok today i have decided to complete an application for the Police Force, a dream of mine that i have always wanted to do, and I'm stuck at what to write for the answer to this question?

Before i get to the question, a little about me, I am over 30, have 2 children, i have a law degree and i currently work in an office dealing with the Offshore Oil Industry, 9-5 Job.
I grew up in the care system from the age of 13, Mother was a Heroin Addict, Neglect, Abuse, you get the picture. I have nothing to do with any of my biological family and my childhood is why the Police force has always been a dream of mine, to help people when they are in the most need and vulnerable.
due to my upbringing i have had alot of life experiences, some good but alot of bad too, but i do not know how to answer this question below,,,

Please describe a specific occasion when you have intervened to take control of a situation.

Why was it necessary to intervene in the situation? *

What did you do to take control of the situation? *

What did you consider when intervening in the situation? *

What was particularly good or effective about how you intervened to take control of the situation? *

What difficulties did you experience and how did you overcome them?

My mind has gone blank, I mean how deep to they want you to go with this? stopping my children fighting and being a referee to them daily or the fact that i once dropped out of a window as a child when my mother was getting beat up, ran across a field bare foot in the dark to call for help, i mean i have no idea :(

anyone else have any ideas on what things i could talk about here?

many thanks for your help

I would say that you need to reference an incident that occurred as an adult and that either happened in the workplace or you can very confidently relate to work related issues.

Ok thanks for that, I can kind of think of something that has happened recently at work, for example i have been asked to cover a part of a business that is new for our team, as an office in Europe has closed, so work has been distributed, however we have not been trained very well and alot of people have no idea what they have to do, so i took it upon myself to sort out a how to guide, typed out with diagrams etc and handed it out to my team members located around the world, as i used my job knowledge to implement process that we should follow, so we are all on the same page etc, i think this would work :)

It's a question designed for you to show your competence and skills with a situation. First of all your judgement and then the actually steps you took to achieve a positive outcome. I'd pick one event as an adult and write about it in detail emphasising your thought processes and a break down of the steps you took.

Your example sounds perfect for question. Best of luck with it.

Thank you for you help, I feel confident with the recent example from my current role :)

Policing is not my area, but I am assuming that there will be core values they expect potential recruits to have. Maybe things like resilience, non-judgment, integrity, calm etc. Look them up. What is their code of conduct? Get an idea and overview of what it is they want police to have.

Those questions will be to draw out examples of those values and to see how you as an untrained layperson understand and interpret them. Once you know that you will be able to bodge your examples to fit a certain value or skill. So if they're getting at resilience, you could talk about how you experienced something in your work that knocked your confidence, then you spent some time reflecting and talking about it with colleagues or manager to work out how you could deal with it better next time. That sort of thing.
Good luck. I assume you've maybe done some volunteering or something similar to see if you do like the role??, in which case you'll be able to draw on experiences from that.

Your example is perfect OP. Good luck.