Who we are
Excel Safe Transitions is a specialist service delivered by Excel Escort Solutions Ltd. The service is based on many years of experience providing secure and non-secure transition support. It also represents a deliberate move to integrate therapeutic and trauma-informed practices into all areas of our service delivery.
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Excel Safe Transitions operates in alignment with the safeguarding, quality, and regulatory standards applicable across our residential children’s homes and SEMH schools, which are also overseen by our current leadership team, thereby ensuring consistency with statutory expectations.
Our Team
Carl Holness
Chief Executive Officer
Darren Cole
Managing Director of Operations
Carl is a former police officer with extensive frontline safeguarding and risk-management experience. He has over 30 years’ experience in the care sector, including secure transition services, residential children’s care, specialist learning disability and complex needs services, and independent educational provision. Carl provides strategic leadership and accountability in high-risk, highly regulated environments.
Darren possesses more than 30 years of expertise in secure escort and transition services and has collaborated with Carl throughout this period. With a background in a regulated industry, Darren has dedicated nearly a decade to leading the operational development of the escort and transition service, ensuring its safe, professional, and consistent delivery in accordance with safeguarding standards and regulatory requirements.
Billie-Jo Kelsey
Director of Care
Emma-Jayne Williams
Director of Therapeutic Services / Consultant Forensic Psychologist
Billie-Jo possesses over 20 years of dedicated experience working with vulnerable children and adults. This includes thirteen years within a therapeutic prison setting, where she held national operational oversight within the Community of Communities (CoC). Additionally, she has substantial experience in residential childcare, serving as a Registered Manager and Responsible Individual, successfully achieving and maintaining Ofsted improvements. Her areas of expertise encompass operational quality, safeguarding, regulation, and service enhancement.
Emma-Jayne is a Consultant Forensic Psychologist with extensive experience across adult prisons, therapeutic communities, Young Offender Institutions, and residential children’s care. She specialises in trauma-informed practice, formulation-led support, forensic risk assessment, and working with children who present with complex developmental, emotional, and behavioural needs. Emma-Jayne provides therapeutic oversight and ensures that practice is clinically coherent, proportionate, and ethically grounded.