The Langford Centre

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• Overview
• Person-centred Care
• Care provision, Integration and continuity
• Providing Information
• Listening to and involving people
• Equity in access
• Equity in experiences and outcomes
• Planning for the future

This means we looked for evidence that the service met people’s needs.

At our last assessment we rated this key question Good. At this assessment the rating has remained Good. This meant people’s needs were met through good organisation and delivery.

Staff supported patients with activities outside the service, such as work, education and family relationships. Staff helped patients with communication, advocacy and cultural and spiritual support. The service treated concerns and complaints seriously, investigated them and learned lessons from the result. Staff promoted a culture in which the people using the service felt empowered to give their views.

However, some patients records showed a disconnect between the assessed needs and what was actually care planned. The discharge plans were mostly generic and standardised.

We have not awarded this service a score for Responsive.

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

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service made sure people were at the centre of their care and treatment choices and they decided, in partnership with people, how to respond to any relevant changes in people’s needs.

Patients records included several personalised care plans that had been created to cover a wide range of complex needs. However, we found no evidence of reasonable adjustments on the ward environment to support autistic patients.

We received mixed feedback from patients about staff involving them in their care and treatment. While 1 patient told us that the ward rounds were good and he felt listened to, other patients told us that they felt ignored during in meetings and that staff talked about them, not to them. We reviewed six patient records and found that patient involvement was clearly documented in four out of the six patient records we reviewed.

Staff we spoke with demonstrated a good understanding of patients and their individual needs. The care and treatment offered was discussed with patients during assessments. We reviewed six patient records and found evidence in all of them of staff encouraging patient involvement during assessment, when this was possible. Staff liaised with patients to identify strategies to manage risks. We saw that staff had worked with patients to create risk management interventions.

Patients had the opportunity to have one to one sessions with nursing staff and gave their views about how the provider ran the service at weekly ward community meetings. The community meetings had standard agenda items around health and safety, advocacy, meals, activities and safeguarding.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service understood the diverse health and care needs of people and their local communities, so care was joined-up, flexible and supported choice and continuity.

Staff supported patients to maintain contact with their families. The patients we spoke with told us that they were supported to stay in touch with family and friends. There were rooms in the hospital that patients could use to meet with visitors, and the service would support patients to visit home or meet with people in the community, once they had the appropriate leave.

Staff helped patients with cultural and spiritual support. 94% of the patients who participated in the hospital wide service user survey in December 2025, stated that staff were considerate of their cultural and religious beliefs.

Staff ensured that patients had access to education and work opportunities, when appropriate. There were opportunities to do horticultural work at the hospital, car valeting, and visits to a local animal sanctuary. We reviewed reports prepared by the multi-disciplinary team to compliment discussions during clinical governance meetings and saw that staff were exploring options for college and vocational courses for patients on Pevensey ward. Staff could support patients to meet their spiritual needs by supporting them to their chosen place of worship.

The provider informed us that they had launched the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework (PCREF) across the organisation. PCREF is an anti-racism and accountability framework which aims to eliminate racial inequalities in healthcare access, experiences, and outcomes. As a result, the service have linked in with a number of different local organisations to work with to promote patient and carer racial equalities, including local religious leaders who had visited the service.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service supplied appropriate, accurate and up-to-date information in formats that were tailored to individual needs.

Staff made notifications to external bodies as needed and referred patients to other professionals when necessary. For example, we saw in a patient’s record that they had been referred to a GP and a physiotherapist.

Staff ensured that patients could obtain information on treatments, local services, patients’ rights, how to complain and other useful information. Patient noticeboards on the ward contained a good level of information about the ward, the local community and services available to patients.

Staff ensured carers, families and commissioners were regularly updated about the patient’s progress. Family members told us that they were involved in their family member’s care and treatment where appropriate. They told us that they were contacted weekly by the service with updates.

Information governance systems included confidentiality of patient records. The provider’s electronic systems required staff to use a login name and password. Staff received General Data Protection Regulation training. The provider had policies in place to ensure patients were told if something went wrong with their care and staff would debrief patients following an incident. Staff would follow their responsibility under duty of candour if something went wrong with a patients care. Duty of candour is a legal requirement for providers of health services to be open and honest when things go wrong with care and treatment.

Staff worked with patients to ensure they gave information to them in a way they understood. Staff could provide information about a patients’ rights and treatments in different languages and staff could access translators if needed.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service made it easy for people to share feedback and ideas, or raise complaints about their care, treatment and support. They involved people in decisions about their care and told them what had changed as a result.

Patients, and their families knew how to complain or raise concerns. Where patients did raise complaints, they were investigated and they received feedback.

The provider reported receiving five complaints in the 12 months prior to our inspection. One complaint was upheld and three were partially upheld. If patients did not agree with the outcome of their complaint, they were supported to refer the complaint to the ombudsman. No complaints had been referred to the ombudsman in the 12 months prior to our inspection.

Staff knew how to handle complaints appropriately. They responded to complaints by patients and made sure that when patients raised concerns, they were treated fairly and kept confidential. Patient feedback, complaints, and compliments were reviewed at clinical governance and patient safety meetings. We reviewed a sample of these minutes and found that staff were discussing and analysing complaints on a monthly basis and maintained a complaints and compliments log.

Patients had the opportunity to join the patient safety and clinical governance meetings, and to attend regular community meetings to share feedback and ideas. However, all the patients we spoke with told us that the community meetings were neither affective nor productive. We reviewed a sample of recent community meetings minutes and found that issues raised by patients were not always followed up. For example, patients had repeatedly raised concerns about staff not always respecting patient’s privacy, such as knocking on doors before entering the patient’s bedrooms, but we found no evidence that these concerns had been recorded and actioned.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service made sure that people could access the care, support and treatment they needed when they needed it.

Staff ensured the needs of patients with mobility issues were met. The hospital had a lift to support people with mobility issues. The ward was on a single level. Patients with mobility issues could access seats for showers and or walking aids.

There were appropriate level of medical cover day and night. There were doctors on site throughout the day during the week and staff had access to on-call doctors at other times.

Staff planned for patients’ discharge and liaised with other services such as local crisis and community teams so that the patient would have the correct level of support on discharge. However, the discharge plans staff completed were mostly generic and standardised. For example, we found no evidence of a detailed transition care plan for a patient who had recently accessed leave in a potential supported accommodation community placement. There was a generic discharge plan in place with little information about this transition and no information about current progress.

The length of delayed discharges varied between one and seven months in the 12 months prior to our visit. There were 4 delayed discharges in February 2026. However, these were due to external factors beyond the ward control, and where they occurred staff worked with stakeholders to manage them.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. Staff and leaders actively listened to information about people who were most likely to experience inequality in experience or outcomes, and tailored their care, support and treatment in response to this.

Staff promoted a culture in which the people using the service felt empowered to give their views. They provided a variety of opportunities for patients to give feedback about the service, including community meetings and surveys. Staff met regularly with patients individually to discuss their care and see if the service was meeting their needs.

Staff completed diversity and inclusion training as part of their mandatory training programme. At the time of our inspection 100% of staff had completed this training. They had also completed the recommended mandatory training in learning disability and autism. Staff were aware of the resources available to them to support patients during their care and treatment.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. People were supported to plan for important life changes, so they could have enough time to make informed decisions about their future.

Staff supported patients to make decisions about their care and treatment and their future. They created personalised care plans to account for the patients’ needs, wishes and feelings. Staff we spoke with were knowledgeable of patients’ individual needs and spoke about how they involved patients and, when appropriate, their families and carers, in their care and treatment.

Staff ensured all relevant healthcare professionals and other relevant bodies were involved in planning the care and treatment offered to patients.