Welcome to the introductory @WeCops blog. The purpose is to introduce everyone to the concept of what WeCops is and then hopefully to tickle your interest and draw you in to either as a watching bystander reflecting on the discussion of the day, or better still by chipping in and adding your own thoughts.
This was started off in the NHS by creative and interested people that wanted a space where all in that profession, regardless of rank, role or confidence, could talk openly about things that mattered to them. The ‘@We’ concept has gathered momentum and spread with communities being created in a wide variety of sectors in health including @WeNurses, @WeAHPS, @WePharmercists and many others, hop over to the health WeCommunities site here. The concept has remained the same in all of them. It is based upon people who are masters of what they do, all talking about what they do, to try and make it even better! It has also transcended the boundaries of the NHS where it was first created and has become a truly worldwide concept with ‘@We’ communities all over the world, all using Twitter as the platform to act as a virtual meeting place to meet up and talk over the issues of the day. Pretty cool really!
As this seemed like such a good and productive way of getting some crowd sourcing of comments, ideas and best practise going on, a small group of people all working in different roles around policing got together under the belief that this would have benefit to UK policing – and @WeCops was born.
You can find out about all of the people in our "About We" page, but in short, it is a group of people from all walks of life, of differing rank, role and level of service and includes academics as well as serving cops. We do take the academic stuff seriously as there is a huge amount to be understood and developed but we try and keep things user friendly in order so it stays in words that can be understood by all! It also keeps the focus on what will really make a difference in an operational sense rather than in just theory as the point of it all is to try and delivery something tangible for the frontline to use. So we make use of #academicpony as a bit of a tongue in cheek, friendly early warning system.
All of the chats on this website are run by those who believe passionately that through connecting people and allowing them to share information, ideas and expertise; we can develop our best practice and ultimately provide better results for everyone. Time is given voluntarily to host the Twitter chats by anyone who wants to be a host, as we can see that through better connections and sharing, comes better results. We like to share the good stuff!!
Although the chats may be predominantly aimed at one group of professionals or a particular subject, all of the chats promote an “everyone is welcome and adds value” approach to tweeting, connecting and learning with academics, the public and well, anyone. All we ask is that common courtesy and common sense prevail as it is a discussion in a public space. Basically, think before you tweet and respect the right for people to think and feel differently than you. It is often in talking to someone at the complete opposite of what you believe that we reflect on our own beliefs and grow as a result.
Where did @WeCops all begin then? Well in a galaxy far, far away…. Each of us got involved for our own personal reasons which we may blog in time but…
We all got involved in @WeCops because we believe that it has big potential value and think that it’s worth trying out. The cuts to policing under austerity have been painful but have made us look at what we do and ask “How can we do this differently?” It’s a great opportunity to try some stuff out that’s new and also to consider if everything that we do is the right way, or indeed the only way – or needed at all! For example, that’s mainly what evidence based policing is pushing forward and that’s not a bad thing. In fact it will eventually deliver really good stuff but at the moment it is enough that we at least are able to have a conversation about it –and @WeCops can help with that.
The world that we police doesn’t stand still either and one of the biggest frustrations is often in not knowing what we already know at some other station, division or even force! The @WeCops platform can assist with the sharing of what we already know just as much as what we might know in the future!
All involved in @WeCops have day jobs that keep us busy but we all care passionately about policing and everyone it touches. The @WeCops team worried, discussed and fretted about talking openly on Twitter about policing matters and weighed up the benefits and risks. We had long discussions about what @WeCops was actually ‘for’, what it would deliver and how we would measure success; otherwise it would simply become an ‘interesting’ thing. We still continue to do this, and haven’t stopped considering how we will know if we are being a ‘success’. We don’t all agree all of the time, so are far from being a bunch of ‘yes’ men (and woman), but we do take the consensus view after everyone has had chance to contribute. We have also lost some original founding members along the way who felt that this platform wasn’t the right time or forum for them, but their early contribution is still highly valued as it keeps us focused and for that we thank them.
We are also not a closed shop and we really encourage that if you are interested in hosting or supporting then all are welcome as this is a platform for you, hosted by you.
The @WeCops platform in the initial days was entirely driven by individuals giving up their time to manually sift through all the tweets to create the blogs and write ups following the weekly chats (often on bits of paper!) Thankfully after demonstrating the initial benefits and value of the concept we have kindly been supported with some (small) funding support so that we can use the ‘@WeCommunities’ IT platform to automate much of this work and speed up the access to the content for everyone (see all your future #WeCops tweetchats here and all your archived ones here). For this we thank Nick and Teresa Chinn – founders of WeCommunities and also the College of Policing for the financial grant. And before anyone gets the wrong idea – we are totally independent of any force, the College, or any other body and will remain so. The facilitators are also very much simply the admin team for the site - the content and ideas come from you! The @WeCops team will take each weekly discussion and produce a summary of it which is then made publicly available, and passed into the relevant work stream of that particular topic to aid in shaping the future of policing.
So to come back to how will we measure success? Well maybe we can’t yet but consider this:
After publishing the recent ‘well being’ discussion summary, the response we got was honestly quite overwhelming, and very positive. Comments of "nailed it” and “everyone needs to read this and then act on it" show the impact that crowd sourcing a topic on @WeCops can have. That is a positive outcome already just from being focused on this for the good of all and taking the time just to understand some of it! Powerful stuff!
The well being summary is here: https://cccupolicingandcj.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/wellbeing-thoughts-from-the-debate-wecops/
Many in policing are feeling that they don’t have a voice about things that are affecting their job at the moment. Perhaps @WeCops is a way of giving people an opportunity to contribute and therefore increasing their knowledge and understanding. It also gives a feeling of being part of it all, and not alone - for everyone.
Perhaps our greatest achievement will be our combined positive voice seeing the world as it is; and then creating the future of how it could be.
Measurable? Maybe, maybe not.
But making a real but small difference, one day and one person at a time? You can bet the farm on that.
And isn't that what day to day policing is really all about?
We will extend the functionality of the @WeCops platform as we grow and will be guided by the tweeting communities needs, so do watch this space.
Please follow us at @WeCops and join in the regular Twitter discussions that are of interest to you. We would love to hear your voice and contributions.
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@ROUCynic
26 April 2016 17:13
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Good idea and the site looks good - good luck! |
