#5 From Police Officer to Purpose: Kate Flint on Trauma, Service & Finding Strength

This week on the I’m Fine podcast, Jayne welcomes a very special guest and a valued member from within her own team - Kate Flint, Training Manager of the EF Training whose life before this role was spent serving as a police officer with Thames Valley Police.

Kate opens up about her journey into policing, from studying sports science and forensic interests to finding her true calling supporting victims of serious sexual violence and major crime. She shares the emotional realities of frontline policing, the pressures of performance culture, and the deep impact that working with trauma can have on those who dedicate their lives to helping others.

In this honest and moving conversation, Kate reflects on compassion, resilience, identity, and the hidden emotional toll carried by emergency service workers. It’s a powerful insight into the human side of policing — and the strength it takes to listen, support and keep showing up for people during the darkest moments of their lives.

Kate Flint 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-flint-47236834b/

EF training exists because nobody should have to pour from an empty cup. Founded by Jayne Ellis who learnt the hard way so you don't have too.

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If you or someone you know would like to join the conversation and be a guest on our podcast, please get in touch. 

Connect with us at info@eftraining.co.uk

Visit us at http://eftraining.co.uk for more information about Jayne Ellis and learn about our Compassion Fatigue and Emotional Resilience Training for Organisations and Individuals.

Please note: This podcast is intended for education and supportive purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health support. If you are struggling, please reach out to a qualified professional or contact your GP. 

The views and options expressed by guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views, values or position of EF training Ltd. Guest content is shared in the spirit of open conversation, learning and intended as a safe space for honest dialogue. 

Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to this week's I'm Fine podcast. My guest today is very special because she's one of my team, and she is the lovely Kate Flint. Kate and I met through a mutual friend who was also working for me at the time. And before Kate came and worked for us, she had another life. And I'm gonna get her to tell you what she did before she joined EF Training. Over to you, Kate. Good morning. Hello. Yes, I did have a life before I worked for EF Training. I was a police officer with Thames Valley Police for a long time. And I did my two years in uniform and very quickly realized that I wanted to specialize in serious sexual violence and working with victims because that's where my strength lay. Whenever any of those kind of jobs came in, they always got passed over to me. And perfectly honest, not many people want to do it. It's not as Gucci as dogs and guns. So as soon as you put your head above the fray, you kinda get whipped off shift and into the specialist role. So I ended up doing my specific training that was dealing with victims, interviewing victims of serious sexual violence. But when you get to that level, actually the way that you interview a victim is the same as the way that you interview a suspect or a witness really. So actually- you end up doing a little bit more within the major crime remit just to use that skill set. So yeah, I did that. And yeah, thought that I'd found my vocation. It was as awful as it sounds And you know- had some really difficult cases and situations, and you really do see the worst of what people do to each other. But- Yeah yeah, I just thought,"Okay that's where my skill set lay." I had an amazing team, and yeah, and I just thought that was gonna be it. Did you always want to be a police officer? Was that your dream when you were growing up as a little girl? No. No. In fact, one of my daughters says that I'm a bit like Barbie. I've had hundreds of different jobs. And when people ask me I'm just... I'm not quite sure how I fit them all in really. I initially wanted to go into sort of sports therapy. That's what my degree is in sports science. And then I got really interested in forensic science, and so that was initially the path that I wanted to go into. To go into scenes of crimes. But those jobs don't come up very often, and I then realized when I started looking into it that generally they're civilians, and the police officers get paid more. And it was my dad that said why don't you look at joining the police?" My granddad had been a policeman. And and yeah once I did, I just it, it made sense really. And it's a long process. It took me about a year to get into it, even though I- I passed every stage first time round. It's just still a really long process. But once I decided that's what I wanted to do, I didn't have any sort of niggles thinking that I'd made any mistake or anything like that. And I knew, although at that point I didn't know what I wanted to specialize in, I knew that there was a, there's a huge range of specialisms that most of them you don't even know about until you actually join, and then you almost find your natural progression, so you said that, you stick your head over the parapet and you wanted to do the sexual crimes because that's- not what everybody wants to do. Yeah. Was there something that, that drew you to that particular- part of policing? Just, I know it sounds a real cliche, but just wanting to help and wanting to listen. And and the thing is, when you're on shift, when you're in uniform you are measured by what is called a detection, which is, at the end of it, have you got a caution or have you given a penalty notice? Have you caught somebody with drugs? But what I was finding is on paper I wasn't a very good officer, because I could spend the whole shift dealing with one particular victim or taking one particular statement, which at the end of it, I'm not going to have a result at the end of that because obviously that's a much longer process. So on paper, I ended up looking like I wasn't performing, and I wasn't from a point of view of being proactive. But for me, I felt much more comfortable and much more- Of value being with a victim or a suspect for that length of time- So- and taking statements. And when you're taking statements for a serious sexual offense or a major crime, they're incredibly detailed statements whether it's taken on video or written. When you're on shift, you're doing written statements, you're looking at sort of 30-plus pages of written statements and you're either the kind of person that, is capable or able or willing to do that or you're not. And if you're not interested in that sort of thing, then that, you're not gonna want to do that. But I suppose just the person that I was really, Yeah I was at that particular point, you've got very little control over what's happening with the investigation or what's happening in the moment. You really are just there to give, the first instance of care to that victim. And that's what I wanted to do. And- I was there to listen. I might not have been able to solve it at the end of the day, but I just felt that was really valuable. And I suppose my colleagues very quickly realized that, so would say,"Okay off you go. You can do, go and deal with that." And yeah, so I think it's just a, you learn very quickly if that's the kind of thing that you want to do. Whereas if you asked me to- Yeah run after a suspect or go and train with the dogs, then no that's not me. No we're doing the same role at the end of the day, but very different kinds of police officers. Yeah. In terms of your team, was they quite diverse? Was it, men and women or mostly women? No Or was, did they come from different backgrounds? When I specialized we had a male sergeant, but my team, at the time there was one chap that was on the team, but he left just as I joined in, and the rest of us were females. Quite a broad spectrum really of ages and experience. And we would go all over the force dealing with that. So very similar in respect to the kind of police officers that we were. But different backgrounds and things like that. I joined when there weren't that many females on shift. So that was always a very sort of male-dominated role. And my shift in particular were a very proactive shift. So when I was saying about that me not performing on paper, that discrepancy was even more noticeable because- my shift was so proactive that in a way on reflection, I'm kinda glad that was there'cause it probably pushed me away from shift quicker than I perhaps would have done. Yeah because I didn't like that feeling of that I wasn't performing. Yeah. I wanted to be able to put my, qualities to use, I suppose so was the job what you expected it to be? Or were there elements of it that, you found more distressing than you thought you were gonna be, or you didn't cope with quite so well? I think when you join the police, you know that you're gonna be working long hours, you're gonna be working shifts, you're gonna be running towards the things that most people run away from. That you're going to see not very nice things. You're gonna have to deal with a lot of not very nice things. So from that point of view, I knew that's what I was gonna expect, I expected that to happen. I didn't realize that humans were that awful until I joined the police. I know that sounds crazy, but, Yeah it's very different seeing things on TV or in the papers and then actually seeing it in real life and thinking,"God, people do this to, to each other." What I didn't expect and what I wasn't prepared for was the impact that it has on you as an individual, and that is never addressed. And actually, it wasn't until I started working for you that I realized that was even missing, and now it's obvious in its omission. But at the time, you don't realize that you don't have it. It's quite bizarre really. So that was what I found difficult, and also that you end up putting so much time into things like the procedures and the policies and the ticking boxes, yeah That, that actually a lot of the time the common sense aspect of it is lost. And then you spend your time on the things that you don't really want to be spending your time on, and then the things that you joined the police to do you don't get time to do. And then it becomes a bit of a frustration because you see the same things over and over. And I suppose most people join the police because they want to make a difference and they want to help. When you're in it, you then realize that you never get to the end of it. You know- Yeah there's never that feeling of,"Oh, yes. I have- I have helped or I have made a difference. On reflection, obviously I can see back now and say,"Yeah, I did but there, there's always somebody else, and so you end up feeling very helpless because no matter what you do, you know that person is going to turn up again as a victim or as a suspect. And it just, the cycle just continues. So elements of it that were what I expected but not that obviously went on to, have a huge impact on me. Yeah and it's the reason that I don't work for the police anymore. We'll come onto that in a minute. Yeah. If you were gonna rewind and I've seen the photographs of 24-year-old Kate in her uniform for the first day. If you were gonna rewind and give her some advice, what do you think that would be? It would be to say,"Speak up." To say-"I'm struggling." To say,"Hang on a minute," that"Really? Am I supposed to be okay with that? Because I'm not." And to say you're not the only person that feels like that, whether, you're the 24-year-old probationer who's going to the first TA, or whether you've been doing it for 30 years and you're at the other end of the process. It's not just you, it's normal, talk about it, because actually, more often than not, if you said to anybody else in that police station or that report writing room,"I'm struggling with this," or I don't know how to deal with that," they would say,"I'm exactly the same." Whereas when you're in it, you just go it's just me. I'm the only person that it's something that's wrong with me." So I would say to that 24-year-old Kate just take care, be careful, you're not going to change the world. You can make a difference, but it needs to not be at the cost of yourself-" which is where it ended up being." So obviously we called this podcast I'm Fine because- Yeah especially people who work in very high pressure, high stress environments will often say that looking back, there must have been times when you said you were fine. You just gave a really good example of, sitting there and you now know that everybody else in that office was feeling the same, but you didn't bring it up. Yeah. Is that why you say,"I'm fine," or was there something else within the culture of what you were doing that just made it impossible for you to say anything except that you were okay? I think there's different aspects of it really. There is this huge stigma that as a police officer you will be fine, especially if you've got- a uniform on. You're going to be fine, you haven't got a choice. Not being fine is a sign of weakness. And then I think on top of that, being a female- there's always this element of if I say about that it's affecting me emotionally or that I'm struggling, then people are going to say of course you are. That's why women shouldn't be police officers. You're the weaker sex." And, those sorts of attitudes, which thankfully are dying out, out a little bit, but are still there. So yeah, there's very much that stigma and not wanting to be judged, especially when I was on shift and before I went to specialize, because, like I said I felt like I was already struggling on paper- that if I then started bringing into it conversations about how I was feeling, that they would just use it as another reason as just to say, this job's not for you." And then I suppose when I specialized you have this this choice of you either say I'm fine," so that I can carry on doing my job and that I can carry on helping people, but then what if something happens down the line- and I've not admitted how I feel? But then if I admit how I feel, then that sets a ball rolling that you might then not want to have to deal with. And from a personal point of view is if I said I was fine, then I didn't have to deal with what I was dealing with if I didn't admit it to anybody else, then I didn't have to admit it to myself, and- I became a master of masking. And, we say in our team and with our clients that people ask how you are all the time, and very rarely does anybody answer with any intention to actually create a conversation. We just say,"Yeah, I'm fine," because the person who's asked you probably hasn't got time to sit and listen. You might not necessarily have the vocabulary. You might not be able to say I don't know what's wrong with me." And I suppose that's a lot of what I felt is, no, I'm not fine, but I don't know what it is that's wrong with me. I don't know why I'm not fine, so it's easier to just say I'm fine- Yeah And not have to admit it. So yeah, it just,"I'm fine" just became my masking and I didn't have to deal with it, and I suppose I became so good at it that- You know, even now if I talk about, how I felt at the time, people'd go I wouldn't have had a clue. I had no idea that's what was going on." And it just really echoes the fact that how people behave really is not always an indication of what's actually going on. Yeah. Did you witness other people who were telling you at the time they were fine, and now you realize that they absolutely weren't? Oh, yeah. Yeah. All the time. All the time. Particularly big burly policemen who aren't- allowed to have emotions or might be higher up in the ranks who, yeah, they're having to deal with some really life-impacting decisions and processes and dealing with the most awful things, and in the moment, you haven't got the time to be saying- this is how I feel." So absolutely, I would see people and think you you're not okay, and I want to be able to talk to you about that. But it's not my place, or we haven't got the time." So definitely there is this just culture of saying it. But there's also very much a culture of people saying that they're fine and actually thinking that they're fine, and that's something that I understand more of now working for EF Training, that they might not actually realize themselves that they're struggling. When they're saying,"I'm fine," they believe that they are. But actually their behavior or how they're acting might indicate that's not quite the case. But- if you get to the end of the shift and somebody says you can have a debrief if you want, but you've got to stay beyond your shift, and you're not gonna get paid overtime, and nobody else is coming, and, you know-" Yeah"You're gonna be judged by it," of course, you're not gonna go,"Are you?" You're gonna say- Yeah"Oh, I don't need that. I'm fine. It's fine." And then you go home- Yeah and you try to deal with it and you're not fine. Are you comfortable sharing the reason that you ended up deciding that it wasn't the right career choice for you? Yeah, absolutely. So I'd specialized my other half's also in a job completely the other end of the spectrum. He is guns and helicopters and all that thing, and thinks that's what people do for their jobs. But yeah. And then we started our family, and then we had our second child, and I was diagnosed with postnatal depression she was probably about eight weeks old. And I remember thinking,"Oh, okay. That's a bit of a blip." And I'd been trying to ignore it actually and trying to just say It's just what it's supposed to be." And I just thought I'll just take a little bit of time off, other half can pick up the slack and I'll go back, and I never did. She's almost 13, so I very quickly found myself at home with two young children on my own because, other half was picking up the slack, and just thinking,"Why is this so hard?" I'm supposed to be enjoying this is supposed to be my reason for being and I can barely get through each day. And I found myself in a very dark hole. Realized that I'd been struggling for a really long time, and that I'd just been ignoring it. And I then spent the next, 10 years in that hole of depression, anxiety, self-harming, suicidal ideation, all those sorts of things. And very much thinking this is awful, and life is gonna be awful, and I'm gonna get to the end of it and go this was awful.'" But as long as the kids are okay, then I'm gonna try and stick with it. But there were times when, you know I decided I can't do this anymore. Everybody else is better off without me. I just can't see a way out." And ended up having to leave the police. And on reflection, it's not something that really should've been allowed to happen. I was told that I'd had to go back or leave, which was not really the way that it should be done. But in that moment- I was so incapacitated with this mental health crisis that I couldn't see the forest for the trees. So the idea of just walking into the police station to have a meeting about my future, I just couldn't even begin to fathom. So I just said I'll leave." And I did. I left, and over the years I tried to do a little bit of other work here and there in safeguarding, education, working with vulnerable children. But ultimately I'd fall at the same hurdles. I'd do well for a certain amount of time, and then I would have a vulnerable person in front of me asking me to help them with the questions that I was still struggling with myself, and going home- and thinking I don't have the answers for me," and I just felt a real fraud. And yeah I'd very much realized that that was it and actually I'm just awful at life, and can't cope with it, and walk a very fine line between, functioning and not. And tried to do work that didn't emotionally eviscerate me every day. You know- Yeah something that hadn't got anything to do with caring or helping others and they're just boring. I just I couldn't do it because it was almost like I had to be sacrificing my own emotional wellbeing to feel like I was actually worthy or making a difference. Yeah and then so I just ended up feeling completely at a loss really because I'd got all of these very sort of specific skills that I'd worked really hard to get and to achieve, and they weren't being used and I just thought it was a real waste really. And yeah, just this awful sort of journey of mental, breakdown really. Yeah. If I waved a magic wand then and I said to you that you could go back and fix the mental health of the police force, was there have been anything that would've helped you at the point when you were really needing some help? I think th- it's a bit of a two-pronged aspect really. At the time when I was in that totally incapacitated and not being able to deal with anything, I very much had to have everything spoon-fed to me with regards to help and support because you just, you can't see. You're just in this dark hole. But I could also see the frustration of the people that were trying to help me because there's only so much they can do. But the awareness needs to be there that at that point it needs to be much more proactive. But what happens is when you go off sick with mental health or anxiety or depression nobody rushes to come and help you. You know- if when you're on shift or at work you get a call that there's an officer in need of assistance, every police officer within a however many mile radius will literally drop what they're doing and run, drive, whatever, on blue lights to go and help that officer. And that is part of that family. But when it's comes to our mental health, there is such a huge stigma attached to it, or we're told by other people,"Don't make contact with them. They're under this review," whatever that it's just this absence of care, and I know that it's not an absence- of care, And then that just perpetuates the cycle and the stigma so people don't want to admit that's what's going on. They feel that they should be ashamed and they feel there's something wrong with them. So I definitely think that there needs to be some more of a proactive and supportive- process in place for people that go off for mental health. But what really needs to change is at the other end. It's when you're coming into the job, it's when you're doing your initial training, and throughout. If somebody had said to me right at the beginning,"This is the job that you're gonna do, this is how you do it, and this is how it might make you feel. And of course it's going to make you feel like that because you're human, and you're dealing with the worst thing that humans do to each other. Of course it's going to have an impact on you, but this is how you make sure it doesn't, tip you over the edge." Because then when it happens, you don't then go into this spiral that I went into of self-blame and not knowing where to turn because we know what it's about, we know what's going on. So we need to do something about it before it happens. We need to be far more proactive, not just reactive when we're trying to mop it all up and put people back together again. Yeah. Yeah. No, we say it a lot, don't we, when we're doing- Yeah the training to other people that, it's emotional health and safety training, and it just, it gets missed out as seen- Absolutely Yeah. And just like I say, just changing that ethos, especially around male police officers. When you look at mental health and especially, suicide rates, it's the most affected demographic is males 50 to 55 that, you know and it's impacting us. And one of those huge reasons is because there isn't that support or that environment where men, particularly in these kind of roles, are feeling able to, or being given the right kind of voice or language to be able to say,"This is how I'm feeling." Yeah so it's just going unchecked and then, people are falling through the gaps. Yeah. And it's really sad because, if they were just given that opportunity or that environment embraced the recognition that of course it's gonna impact you, and that's fine. It doesn't make you any less of a man, it doesn't make you any less of an officer. It makes you stronger. Absolutely. And you could ask a room full of people if they were in need of a police officer helping them, would they want somebody that goes, I'm not quite sure I know how to help, and that's awful. But do you know what? I'm gonna sit down with you, and I'm gonna have a cup of tea, and we're gonna talk about it." Or do you want somebody that can, you know, quote legislation word for word, but hasn't got that language or that empathy there? So it's not this awful weakness that we seem to think that it is. It makes- people more capable So that's what I would love to see, is just that environment is encouraged and harnessed, especially for male officers, Yeah because that's what then perpetuates the change, isn't it? Yeah. Very good point. I hope they're listening yes, me too. So let's go back to you for a minute. Yeah. In the training, we talk about one of the strategies that we use to be able to help ourselves moving forwards as responsible selfishness. What is Kate's responsible selfishness? Being kinder to myself. Just recognizing that, that actually I'm much better than I used to be, mostly thanks to you and my team, and that I feel incredibly privileged to be able to spend my working life helping people. But it's about recognizing that I still have those days where they spiral. Yesterday was one of those and right from the outset I know that this day is gonna spiral and whereas before I used to spend all day trying to drag it back to prove to myself, to prove to everybody else,"No, I am capable. I'm a good mom, I'm a good this, I'm a good that. Look, I've cleaned my oven and I've cleaned the windows," and all that sort of stuff. And it would still spiral and it would just get worse and worse. And so what I do now is just be kinder to myself and just go,"Okay, it's gonna be one of those days, so let's just embrace it." Put my expectations right back to basics. Today's about survival. If the kids go to bed and they're fed and they're warm and they're loved, then it doesn't matter that I haven't cleaned the oven. Yeah and actually my point of view is that now how can that possibly be a day of not achieving, that my children are loved and warm and fed. That has got to be an achievement somewhere along the line. So it's really about me being kind to myself and still, guilt is my biggest hurdle to self-care and I was expecting that hurdle to go as I got better. And I've realized only recently that, that it hasn't gone and I just thought does that mean I'm not as better as I thought I was?" But what I've realized is that I don't think it's about those hurdles going, not in my case anyway. It's about just learning to get over them. So- I still feel the guilt every single time I do a bit of self-care, whether it be going and having a bath or saying to my children,"No, I'm not doing that. I'm gonna sit down and have a cup of tea." Or putting my needs as a priority just once. I still feel that guilt, but what I do now is more often than not, I will do the self-care anyway even though I feel the guilt. Whereas before the hurdle would always stop me. Because I know what happens- Now if I don't do that self-care. So it really is about being kind to myself and also recognizing that when we talk about self-care it's building blocks. It's little things that done consistently and incorporating lots of different techniques is much more effective than once every six months going on a yoga retreat. As lovely as that would be. Okay? It's the everyday things. So- Yeah so that's my, responsible selfishness is recognizing that actually sometimes I do just need to say,"I've got to go and have a bath, or I've got to sit down and have this cup of tea while it's hot," as opposed to doing all the million and one other things. And just recognizing that those small things do make a huge difference. And I always say it feels like a million years ago, but one of my colleagues. He said to me,"Some days are diamonds, and some days are rocks." And I've written that down. Whatever job that I've had, it's always been written down somewhere, stuck to a computer screen or on my desk. And I still use it now, and I say it to every single person that I train, is that it's a balance. I might today be able to do loads of stuff and clean my windows and, sort through a load of stuff, and tomorrow might be a survival day. But, it's just that balance. And it's learning to not beat myself up about that because, the world is still spinning, whether I've cleaned my oven or not. That is a brilliant end. Absolutely fantastic. I'm gonna write it on a T-shirt. We're gonna do. Thank you so much, Kate, for your time, and thank you for being part of my team. And I'm hope that you carry on saying that you're fine and that you mean it- next time. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jane. Thank you. Thank you for making me well. You're very welcome. Goodbye. Bye. Take care. Bye.