The Langford Centre

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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 means we looked for evidence that the service involved people and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.

At our last assessment we rated this key question Good. At this assessment the rating has remained Good. This meant people were supported and treated with dignity and respect and involved as partners in their care.

Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness. They respected patients’ privacy and dignity. They understood the individual needs of patients and supported patients to understand and manage their care, treatment or condition. Staff involved patients in care planning and risk assessment. Staff informed and involved families and carers appropriately.

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.

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

We observed caring interactions between staff and patients during our visit. Staff attitudes and behaviours when interacting with patients were kind and responsive. Patients told us that staff treated them well and behaved appropriately towards them. All the patients we spoke with told us that staff treated them with dignity and respect.

Family members told us that they were treated well by staff and they were involved in their family member’s care and treatment where appropriate. A family member described staff members as friendly and helpful.

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 maintained the confidentiality of information about patients.

However, we identified some communication issues between patients and staff. Three patients told us that staff often spoke in languages that were not English on the ward. We raised this with the provider who informed us that they had already identified this as an area of improvement and they were working on developing an action plan.

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.

The service made adjustments for disabled patients, for example by ensuring disabled people’s access to premises and by meeting patients’ specific communication needs. The ward was located on the first floor of the building, however the service had a lift to support people with mobility issues when needed. Staff reviewed any mobility issues to ensure they could safely care for all new admissions. The provider made sure that information was available to patients in a format they could understand. The provider could provide information in different languages and arrange for translators if needed.

Patients had a choice of food that could meet the dietary requirements of religious and ethnic groups and to account for allergies and intolerances. There were menus with selection of foods available at mealtimes and included arrangements for special dietary and cultural requirements. The patients we spoke with told us that the food was good.

Staff ensured that patients could obtain information on treatments, local services, patients’ rights, how to complain and so on. Staff told us that they would explain treatments and provide information to patients about their treatment. The patients we spoke with told us they were given information about their care.

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.

Staff involved patients in their care planning and risk assessment. We found evidence in the patients’ care records that staff discussed risk assessments with the patients, and care plans were personalised and written in a way that patients could understand.

Staff we spoke with were knowledgeable of the patients’ individual needs and spoke about how they involved patients in their care and treatment.

Patients were supported to maintain relationships and to stay connected with their family and friends. The patients we spoke with told us that they were supported to stay in touch with family and friends.

Staff regularly reminded patients detained under the Mental Health Act of their rights.

However, we received mixed feedback from patients about staff involving them in their care and treatment. While a patient told us that the ward rounds were good and they felt listened to, other patients told us that they felt ignored during meetings and that staff talked about them, not to them.

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 and acted to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress.

Staff identified and responded to changing risks to, or posed by, patients. Staff completed a risk assessment of all patients on or shortly after they were admitted to the ward. The risk assessment covered both physical and mental health risks. There was a daily meeting where staff were updated and discussed any risks or incidents. There were monthly patient safety meetings where staff discussed risks and any actions that had been agreed to mitigate them.

Staff used de-escalation techniques to reduce the need for physical interventions when patients’ behaviours became heightened. We found evidence of this in patient’s care records. Staff devised positive behaviour support plans for patients when needed. A positive behaviour support plan is a document created to help understand behaviours and what kind of support the patient needs.

Staff had structures in place to capture feedback from patients. There were weekly community meetings where patients had the opportunity to provide feedback and raise any issues. You said we did posters were updated accordingly by staff following these meetings. We saw that these posters had been updated just before our visit and included requests made by patients, such as a request for a table tennis.

We scored the service as 3. 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 positive about working for the provider and their team. They felt respected and valued. Based on the February 2026 staff survey results, 74% of staff who participated in the survey said that they always, or most of the time, felt recognised, respected and motivated.

The staff that we spoke with told us that they felt listened to and that their workload was manageable. Staff had regular opportunities to provide feedback, raise concerns and suggest ways to improve the service or staff experiences. Staff told us that they had regular team meetings and were able to raise concerns and make suggestions for improvements.

Staff told us that they had opportunities and were supported to attend training to further develop their career. Internationally recruited staff felt well supported by the organisation during the process to gain their UK registration and settle in. The provider informed us that they had introduced monthly continues professional development sessions that were open for all staff to attend.

Managers were taking action to improve following staff feedback. Following the 2026 staff survey, managers completed an action plan to address concerns raised by staff. For example, many staff indicated that they were not aware of the provider’s employee assistance programme. An action had been created to ensure information on the employee assistance programme was visible to staff in all non-patient areas.