Nicky Mawer
My name is Nicky Mawer, I’m a Senior Communications Officer, I work in a team of people and it’s part of the Corporate Comms team.
My role particularly deals with vulnerability, so I support the teams in the force that look to protect vulnerable people.
In Corporate Comms there isn’t really a typical day, no two days are the same if I’m honest. So, on a day-to-day basis, I might come in in the morning and need to write something for Forcenet that is informing force personnel about something in particular. A little later on in the day, I may be briefing a journalist, a little later on I could well be in a meeting and talking to communications colleagues in other organisations, so as I say, no two days are the same.
The Corporate Comms team is a team that has got different skills in it, so we’ve got some people within the team that have specialist areas. We’ve got an individual in our team that looks after our website, we have a social media lead, and we also have our news team that are basically answering all media enquiries that come into the force.
I talked earlier about the fact that we work in partnership, very often, in particularly the role that I have around vulnerability, and this year I was tasked with supporting out local Safeguarding Childrens Partnership to develop a film around child exploitation. It’s such an important topic and an area where we need to make sure that people fully understand what child exploitation is. With the marketing colleagues in our team, we developed a film, and we had actors and locations and we developed a storyboard and worked with a production company. So, it was really exciting to be a part of that and tell the story that we need to tell to people in order to protect youngsters and children. That was a standout moment for me, I’m really, really proud of the product that we developed.
I suppose in the role that I have, we’re not frontline police officers, but actually we do have the privilege of taking to victims of crime. I’ve very recently interviewed a couple of victims of domestic abuse on camera, which is really brave of them to do so. You have to really think about teasing out the questions so that we’re telling a story because we want to use those videos to help police officers understand what it’s like from a victim’s perspective but also make sure that we’re telling the victim’s story in a really sensitive way, and that can be a little bit of a challenge but it’s a real privilege to listen to people’s stories and understand what they’ve gone through and how brave they are coming forward. And I think in comms, because we’re privy to so much information, I think one of the things for me is actually we see the worst of humanity and what people do to each other, but also on the other side, we see the best of humanity, and the bravery and kindness that’s out there as well, so we get to see both sides of that.
Meet Nicky Mawer, Senior Communications Officer, who has been with Northamptonshire Police for eight years.
“I initially joined the Force in 2015 to support internal communications – I also worked for a short time in the OPFCC. I took a break in service in early 2021 after a heart attack, but I really missed working and rejoined the comms team again later the same year - but in a different role.
“I work part-time within the Corporate Communications Department – my main role is to support communications related to vulnerability and safeguarding, which includes Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) - domestic abuse, rape and sexual assault, child sexual exploitation, child criminal exploitation, mental health, online child abuse, etc. I also support work linked to prevention and intervention.
“As part of my role, I liaise with the chief officer team, with senior police officers and staff, and those working on the front line and behind the scenes. I also work with statutory partners such as the local authorities, the health sector, safeguarding boards, and with victim focussed organisations such as Voice, and with partners in the third sector.
“There is no such thing as a typical day working in comms! It’s a very varied job. One day I could be writing a media release, creating posts for a social media campaign, or developing a storyboard for a new animated film. Another day, I could be briefing journalists about a Force initiative or arranging a media ride-along with officers, I could be working with designers about developing a multi-media campaign, or co-ordinating a press conference or launch event. Or I could be training officers for media interviews, writing a script for a ForceNet vlog, supporting a Facebook Live event, or interviewing domestic abuse victims willing to share their stories. So, the job is diverse.
“I also attend some of the Force board meetings such as the Vulnerability Board and Prevention and Intervention Board, as well as attending communication partnership meetings linked to safeguarding, and various other meetings. No two days are the same.
“The Corp Comms team is a friendly and supportive bunch. Some members of our team are responsible for specific areas such as social media, the website, or marketing, but we are generally omnicompetent and can each undertake most tasks to support the team at busy periods, and we often work as a whole team on larger projects.
“There are 14 of us in the team and my colleagues are terrific, enormously skilled, knowledgeable and conscientious - there is a real ‘can do’ attitude and I’m proud to work alongside them. Members of the team also work ‘on call’ so we have 24/7 cover to respond to urgent or important comms tasks outside of normal office hours. Making sure critical information is relayed to the public and the media outside of normal working hours.
“To do this job you need to be a good all-round communicator, have a creative mindset, and have decent writing skills – as you do a lot of writing in this role. You need to feel confident about asking questions to get the information you need to create a media story, develop a communication strategy or campaign. A good sense of humour is also a plus!
“I love the variety and the opportunity to learn new things that this role brings. It’s such an interesting job. Our team is generally privy to most things going on, as corporate communications usually have the job of sharing details of what’s happening across the Force, internally and externally.
“We have a broad knowledge of the teams and departments within the Force and what the Force is focussed on. We also liaise with all levels of staff and officers – so we get to hear all perspectives - from the most senior and experienced, to the newest and youngest members of our workforce.
“An important part of the role is our focus on victims. I have had the privilege of interviewing a number of victims over the years – and I am always humbled by their courage in agreeing to talk to me on or off camera about their experience – which is often because they want to share their story to encourage others to get support and help and avoid the years of distress, abuse or violence that they have experienced.
“When creating content, writing media releases, and developing campaigns, I try to think about the perspective of the victims or of potential victims, and what information would be useful for them. What do we want them to know? What could we share that could help to safeguard them or help them to access the right help and support?
“Last year, we produced a film about child exploitation on behalf of the Northamptonshire Safeguarding Children’s Partnership called I’m Being Exploited which I am very proud of. I led this work, working closely with my comms colleagues Zakia and Anna who are the marketing specialists in our team and enormously knowledgeable. The film is aimed at parents/trusted adults to help them think about whether a child’s behaviour could be linked to criminal or sexual exploitation. We wrote a storyboard, and went on to develop the film with a production company, agreeing the actors, attending the shooting of the film on location, developing the script for the voice-over etc.
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“Although I work for the police and led on the development of the film, it was important that this wasn’t seen as a police product, as it needed to be adopted and shared by all the agencies to amplify the film and messaging as widely as possible. When dealing with numerous partners, who all have their own opinions and perspectives, you need patience, tact, and diplomacy - so that everyone feels their views have been heard – which I think we handled particularly well. The end product was a really impactive film – which we launched in October last year and has received extremely positive feedback from our partners and from the public. We are using it as part of a wider child exploitation awareness raising campaign, and I’m currently working on the next phase of the project.
“When Covid-19 hit in 2020, different statutory agencies came together as a Strategic Co-ordination Group to support the County through the pandemic – these included health, local authorities, fire, police, education etc. Within this strategic group was a communications cell – as timely communications to the public and to agencies during this time was vitally important – as things were rapidly changing.
“A few weeks before the first lockdown was announced, I transferred from the police comms team to provide mutual aid to the comms cell – I was embedded and worked as the deputy within the small comms team. As you can imagine, in the early days of the pandemic it was enormously busy with so much information to communicate, which was continually changed and updated – almost every few hours. In the beginning I regularly worked 12-hour days and at weekends and bank holidays to keep up with the demands and with the constant media requests. It was a frantic time.
“Having a background in health comms was also enormously helpful as I had a good understanding of public health and the wider health system - which is complex– and particularly as the NHS enjoy an acronym as much as policing do! It was good to work in partnership with comms colleagues from other statutory bodies and I think we learned a lot from each other. I’ve certainly brought back some ideas and knowledge from the experience, which I’ve used in my police comms work.
“Coming away from the experience, it made me realise how good police comms is and how skilled and effective our team is. We communicate with the public so regularly and deal with difficult and emotive subjects every day and in quick time. We warn and inform routinely about crime and incidents without thinking about it, which helps when dealing with more serious events. Of course, we don’t always get things right – but I think more often than not we do.
“I was surprised by how much of what officers’ deal with day to day is not crime-related but linked to deprivation, vulnerability, and safeguarding. I don’t think the public appreciates how much work outside of criminality is picked up by police officers. I was also shocked by the prevalence of domestic abuse. It’s such a hidden, complex problem and I’m glad that is being talked about much more widely and openly - much of my work is linked to highlighting VAWG and encouraging victims to report it and seek help.
“Comms has changed so much over the years – with the development of the internet and social media we are able to communicate much more directly with the public now. Whereas previously we relied much more on print or broadcast media to share news and messaging. We can now create our own content, our own videos and interviews and give it directly to our communities which means the message doesn’t get diluted.
“Our team as a whole provides both reactive and proactive services to help the Force prevent and detect crime, safeguard the vulnerable and protect public safety. We are also there to support public confidence in policing – which for many reasons has been taking a real battering lately.
“We do this by responding to media enquiries, requests for interviews and filming opportunities and by sharing information with officers and staff via our internal channels.
“We support operational policing on crimes, events or with criminal justice outcomes. We share information on our website and social media channels. We also help in responding to public comments and enquiries on our social media channels.
“I think I see us as story tellers. It’s our job to share factual stories and information about the organisation and about crime to a range of different audiences to help warn, inform, safeguard, and protect the communities we serve.
“I was completely ignorant of policing before I joined the Force. Although in comms we don’t work in frontline roles, we do work very closely with the operational teams and are therefore privy to a lot of information and operational detail - some of which is enormously shocking and upsetting - but we also get to see the enormous passion and efforts officers and staff make to apprehend and bring perpetrators to justice. I think working in police comms we witness both the worst of humanity and best of humanity. I have enormous admiration for our police officers – who are incredibly brave, walking in to the unknown to protect us all.”
Richard Edmondson, Head of Corporate Communications and Nicky’s supervisor, said: “Nicky works within the world of safeguarding and vulnerability, an area which she is passionate about and has brought great energy to since picking up a couple of years ago. She is right across her brief and is really good at working with police colleagues in developing effective and often eye-catching comms as well as passing on her expertise to officers via media training sessions which have been incredibly well received.
“She is always a pleasure to work with and am pleased she has highlighted two really significant “jobs” above – the key role she played in developing our comms during Covid when she was seconded to work within the joint Communications cell and her leadership in delivering the child exploitation video for the Northamptonshire Safeguarding Children’s Partnership, now viewed more than 85 thousand times. Thanks Nicky.”
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