Success Stories: Keys Group, UK

How building a strong partnership with Team Teach has facilitated sustainable change across a diverse range of services.

• Name: Gemma Nisbet
• Role: Learning & Development Manager
• Organisation: Keys Group
• Location: UK

About Keys Group

Keys Group comprises six of the UK’s leading specialist providers of adult care, children’s services, education, and healthcare.

With over 9,000 staff members nationally, the Group supports over 2,500 children, young people, adults, and families through residential homes, supported living, specialist schools, activity-led education, hybrid learning solutions, and clinical health services.

Benefits of choosing Team Teach

Gemma describes the partnership with Team Teach as flexible, collaborative, and highly responsive. She explains:

“It’s an excellent partnership. We know that we can pick up the phone, meet up, have really good conversations, and explore different options. That flexibility is so important for us here at Keys Group.”

Access to tailored training, the online Connect platform, and the digital Knowledge Hub containing over 100 hours of professional development resources have all strengthened compliance, improved staff confidence, and created a culture where staff feel supported and empowered.

The objective

To create a strong, two-way partnership between Keys Group and Team Teach, to ensure sustainable outcomes and consistency across the whole Group.

Background

When Gemma started in her role, compliance was a key focus area, as well as finding training solutions that would work effectively across a diverse range of services and settings.

There were only a small number of Team Teach trainers across the large and expanding group.

Challenges

Rapid organisational growth and acquisitions required the swift integration of new services into a consistent framework.

The arrival of the pandemic proved challenging, creating obstacles to in-person training opportunities.

Staff retention was a priority, with new team members joining the Group.

Aims

The aim was to forge a strong partnership between Keys Group and Team Teach, to ensure a consistent and sustainable approach to behaviour support.

Solution

Keys Group and Team Teach have developed a strong partnership that has led to sustainable change across all services within the Group.

Collaboratively, they have created a long-term training plan and have significantly expanded their pool of in-house Team Teach trainers to 30. This trainer community ensures consistency of approach across all services, including new acquisitions.

Regular meetings and calls with Team Teach staff ensure a highly responsive approach to support, while digital tools like Connect and the Knowledge Hub promote compliance and continuous professional development.

Results

This partnership has strengthened Keys Group’s culture of behaviour support, improving compliance, building a sustainable trainer network, empowering staff, and ensuring smooth integration of new services.

The partnership has had many benefits:

• A strong and sustainable trainer team, with trainers staying in role long-term and supporting each other.
• Improved compliance across the organisation, with all records and certificates managed efficiently through Connect.
• Greater independence among frontline staff, who can access resources directly and apply learning confidently in their roles.
• Positive culture change across all services around values-driven behaviour support.
• Successful integration of new homes, schools, and services, aligned with the Team Teach framework.

As Gemma says, “We share the same values, and together we’ve built a strong, consistent training culture that really supports our staff and the children in our services.”

Next steps

Keys Group continues to expand, with new schools, homes, and specialist services joining the Group.

Team Teach remains central to this growth, ensuring every new service benefits from a safe, consistent, and empowering culture of behaviour support.