Forensic secure services

St Andrew’s provides a comprehensive range of medium and low secure care, through innovative services, to help support patients with complex needs. 

We have dedicated gender-specific services for men, women, and age-specific services for older adults and adolescents.

Comprehensive care services, which also include locked and open rehabilitation care, enable us to provide clear direction and progress for patients whilst testing resilience, coping strategies and risk.

Complex conditions

Often patients suffer from combinations of multiple conditions, including mental illness, personality problems, adverse family backgrounds, limited life skills and histories of alcohol and substance misuse. Many have histories of offending and non-compliance, repeated failed placements and attempts at community integration and movement between mental health and criminal justice services. This can lead to a cycle of escalating social exclusion, loss of meaningful social roles and continued offending behaviour.

Addressing risk behaviours

We use nationally recognised and accepted structured professional judgement risk assessment tools including:

  • HCR-20: Risk Assessment for Violence.
  • RSVP: Risk Assessment for Sexual Offending
  • START: The Short-Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability
  • MOAS (Modified Overt Aggression Scale).

In addition, we utilise a number of tools developed at St Andrew’s:

  • HoNOS- Secure
  • SASBA: St Andrew’s Sexual Behaviour Assessment Scale
  • SAFARI: St Andrew’s Fire and Risk Instrument
  • SASKI: St Andrew’s Sexual Knowledge and Attitudes Instrument.

We also undertake full diagnostic assessments for specific conditions such as Autism Diagnostic Interview, Revised (ADI-R) and Dementia Care Mapping.

A therapeutic culture

We engage patients in their own treatment, empowering them to develop increasing responsibility for their care and behaviours. We put the patient at the centre of their recovery, so personalised care programmes are developed for each individual with their specific needs in mind.

We pride ourselves on quality of care and our extensive range of therapeutic interventions and treatments, which are tailored for our very distinct patient group. These are delivered by our extensive MDT including Nursing, Occupational Therapy and Psychology, for example:

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy
Offence-related work such as Fire Setting and Sexual Offender Treatment Programme
Problematic Drug and Alcohol use
Mindfulness
Behavioural Family Therapy
Activities of Daily Living e.g. Kitchen Assessments
Music & Art Groups
Sport and Physical Recreation
Personal Fitness Training

Environments and facilities

St Andrew’s has invested heavily in providing some of the most up-to-date and modern facilities in which to provide care. Often within the secure perimeter, we provide a range of facilities which enable continuation and consistency of care.

These include:

-       Sensory rooms
-       Therapy Kitchens
-       Fitness and Health Suites
-       IT suites
-       Libraries
-       Physical health suites
-       Family visiting suites