Glen Blackwell has over 30 years of policing experience with Western Australia Police. In this time, he has witnessed the disconnect between service providers, the judicial system and police in supporting individuals with mental health disabilities and/or illness who regularly come into police contact.
He believes individuals living with mental health deserve the same, if not more proactive assistance, than other policing fields to set in place judicial diversion and better collaborative working networks.
Glen as a 2020 Churchill Fellow travelled to the United States of America, England and Canada to exploring proactive multi-agency programs already successfully in diversion of individuals from judicial systems back into the management of health and support services in the community.
The last 5 years has seen him working in the trial and rollout of the Western Australia Police Force’s Mental Health Co-Response reactive crisis intervention model. Due to this new policing model his team was awarded the 2018 WA Police Excellence Award and 2018 Mental Health Commissioner’s Award. Currently, Glen has been appointed in the newly created position for the Western Australia Police Force as the full-time policing Mental Health trainer, seeing him develop and deliver training to frontline police officers.
He is currently working towards completion of a Masters in Leadership from Notre Dame University