Recovery of survivors.
I may be a bit rusty but I was under the impression that the basket method used by the USCG was primarily to keep the survivor in a horizontal position when being lifted out of freezing water so preventing migration of blood from the chest area to the legs. We carried two strops on the hook to achieve this and it was a right fiddle.
The two winch arrangement is there to give a second lifting capability should the primary winch go u/s or the cable has to be cut. My m emory is a bit suspect but I did the case of the Alexander Kesserling (excuse spelling) in system Failure Analysis and seem to remember that two Sea Kings lost their winch cables during the rescue and had to return to base.
Bristow used to have a rescue net for the cargo hook in the hangar years ago and it looked pretty simple though I have never seen it in action.