Head Office

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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

At our last assessment there was insufficient evidence to rate caring as we did not speak to patients. At this assessment we have rated caring as good as we found feedback from patients and organisations that supported them was positive. The service had systems to receive and act on feedback and take action to make adjustments as needed.  

We have not awarded this service a score for Caring.

Find out about when we will not publish a key question score and what we look at when we assess Caring.

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 described interacting with patients in a way that was discreet, respectful and responsive, providing patients with help, emotional support and advice at the time they needed it.

Feedback data from people and their relatives was positive. For example, we viewed feedback about a recent transportation that referenced ‘truly exceptional care’ and described staff’s ‘professionalism, compassion, and genuine care’ with ‘kindness and reassurance’ helping to make a difficult situation easier for the family. Survey results were positive with 99% of those surveyed describing the service as excellent or good.

Staff understood the individual needs of patients, including their personal, cultural, social and religious needs.

Staff said they could raise concerns about disrespectful, discriminatory or abusive behaviour or attitudes towards patients without fear of the consequences. Staff we spoke with told us they had no concerns about such behaviour.

Staff maintained the confidentiality of information about patients.

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

Staff had received training in treating people as individuals. Training included awareness of people’s unique backgrounds and protected characteristics. Examples of training included dementia awareness, learning disability and neurodiversity awareness training and the care of people from the LGBTQ+ communities.

The service made reasonable adjustments for patients – for example, by increasing the number of crew to ensure adequate staffing numbers and mix of skills to care for people’s individual needs.

There was no easy read guidance on the service and staff did not use pictorial prompts to aid communication. Staff told us they would use translation services on their phones if needed and managers showed us a common phrase book that was in use, providing staff with simple statements about front line care and ambulance services. Additionally, there was a written leaflet about the service in different languages.

Patients had a choice of food to meet the dietary requirements of religious and ethnic groups and to account for allergies and intolerances. When on longer journeys staff would plan rest breaks where they would stop for food, they told us they gave patients choice in what type of food they would stop for, ensuring that the patient’s individual needs and preferences were met.

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.

Staff described how they assessed individual patient needs and gave people the opportunity to make choices where this was possible. This included where people made choices about what food they ate on journeys. Where people did not have mental capacity to exercise choice and control, staff understood their responsibilities to work with family, referring and receiving services to act in the person’s best interests.

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 were aware of and dealt with any specific risk issues, such as risk of self-harm and violence and aggression. They had received training in their duty of care, mental health and assessing risks to enable them to recognise risks quickly and respond to them.

Staff identified and responded to changing risks to patients. This included when patients exhibited behaviours that were challenging. Staff had received training in de-escalation techniques and staff we spoke with described how they would use these skills to manage a changing situation. Staff had also received training in restraint and when these skills were used managers reviewed them and debriefed with staff to ensure people’s needs, views and wishes were considered as part of the restraint process.

The evidence showed a good standard. The service cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff and supported and enabled staff to always deliver person-centred care.

Staff felt respected, supported and valued. They told us they were appropriately supported by managers. They found managers approachable and were able to ask for support as they needed it.

Managers were aware of the need to support staff, particularly after difficult situations and episodes of violence and aggression. They offered staff debriefing sessions in-house and signposted staff to local emotional and mental health support services when needed.

Staff felt positive and proud about working for the provider and their team. As staff were employed on an ad hoc basis, the service did not monitor sickness absence.

Staff appraisals included conversations about career development and learning and how it could be supported.