Secure Care UK Limited

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• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

This is the first assessment of caring for this service. This key question has been rated good. This meant people were supported and treated with dignity and respect; and involved as partners in their care.

This service scored 70 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service always treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff treated colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

Staff treated patients with kindness and respect. Between January and August 2025, email patient feedback showed all patients felt they had been treated with understanding and staff always introduced themselves.

Service feedback from 2024 for Keynsham, Marlborough and Taunton bases showed external stakeholders felt all staff were excellent, good or ok for professionalism and patient care. There were no incidences of bad or very bad feedback.

The service gave staff electronic and printed faith and culture guides to help them understand different patient needs. Staff were able to explain how diverse backgrounds in faith and cultures might impact on an individual patient’s values, care and treatment, hygiene and transport needs.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They took account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

Patients' needs and preferences were always considered. The service made adjustments for patients. We observed an episode of care where staff recognised the patient’s fears about sexual safety and accommodated this need by changing the team members.

Information about race, religion and gender were routinely collected during the booking process. Staff were familiar with how to use communication cards, the handbook of faiths and cultures and Basic Sign Language (BSL) cards which were always available in standard transport grab bags. The service was developing a new communication aid for staff to use with less verbal patients to be able to express more complex thoughts.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service promoted people’s independence, so people knew their rights and had choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

Service users were primarily patients detained under Mental Health Act sections, and therefore experienced limitations on their independence and choice. However, the service involved patients in decision-making when it was safe to do so. In the 5 paediatric risk assessments we reviewed, all records showed staff checked whether patients knew about the planned journey and whether they wanted carers or relatives, who were assessed as safe, to travel with them. This meant patients had some control over their transport arrangements when appropriate.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service listened to and understood people’s needs, views and wishes. Staff responded to people’s needs in the moment and acted to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress.

Staff identified and responded to changing risks to patients. Staff were observed asking if patients were comfortable during the transport journey, adjusting music on the radio and air controls to suit patients’ preferences and needs. Incident records showed staff had recognised when patients had deteriorated, escalated concerns and diverted transport to urgent and emergency care centre. When this happened, staff made sure patients were confirmed medically fit to travel before completing the journey to the destination service.

We scored the service as 2. The evidence showed some shortfalls. The service did not always care about and promote the wellbeing of their staff. Some staff did not always feel supported or enabled.

The services’ most recent staff survey was focused on racial and sexual abuse, harassment or discrimination from patients towards staff. Of 20 respondents, 75% of staff reported they had been subjected to harassment, discrimination or abuse from patients and 90% of staff had witnessed this occurring towards a colleague. Most staff had experienced sexual abuse or discrimination from a patient. Leaders and staff recognised the increased risk of this occurring due to the vulnerable patients they worked with. The impact of these incidents affected staff in different ways, where some staff felt demoralised. Some staff had the perception this was ignored by the company. However, leaders arranged welfare checks with teams, published internal messaging to support staff, altered bookings risk assessments to help identify increased risk areas and mitigate this and setup a peer support network to increase mental health first aid resilience.

Some staff said leaders did not check on staffs’ wellbeing when serious incidents or injuries occurred. We reviewed a sample of records for recent workplace injuries. Leaders reported injuries to the Health and Safety Executive and undertook return to work discussions with staff in line with the service’s policy. Leaders documented individuals’ preferred routes of communication when planning supportive conversations. This balanced the staff members’ wellbeing with service planning. Conversations through email, telephone call and in person meetings were documented clearly and showed managers asked staff what they needed and referred staff to occupational health when needed.

Staff said they sometimes felt vulnerable and did not always feel adequately protected from harm as there were not enough stab vests available if more than 1 crew needed this. The service’s policies showed stab vests were only for use when attending a high-risk transfer, normally for section 135 transfers and community assessments. Equipment records showed there were 8 stab vests available if staff were deployed from the Keynsham site, but there were none available from the Marlborough or Taunton sites. This meant staff deployed from satellite locations could be put at risk of harm, if they entered a high-risk environment. However, there were no incidents of avoidable harm due to stabbing injuries.