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The purpose of this paper is to provide a narrative review of what is currently known about the high rates of falls, and fall injuries, which are experienced by people with learning disabilities (LDs) throughout their lives.

Narrative review. Current evidence is summarised as key points and recommendations for practitioners and researchers.

People with LDs experience similar rates of falls as older adults in the wider population, but throughout their lives, or at an earlier age.

Key points and recommendations are summarised for practitioners and researchers to promote fall prevention strategies and interventions for people with LDs.

Age-related processes are marked by physiological, psychological and social decline, threatening health, quality of life, functional status and the mobility of individuals. As the impact of demographic change also begins to affect persons with intellectual disabilities (ID), issues and needs regarding the aging process are slowly entering the field of ID research. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In the population of older people with ID, important, age-related events such as falls have prompted increasing research. Falls may lead to several negative health outcomes, require that an individual receives higher levels of care sometimes including hospitalisation and, in the worst case, hasten death. Falls also lead to psychological consequences such as fear of falling which fuels a vicious circle in which older persons afraid of falling reduce their physical activity, in turn hastening their functional decline.

Fall prevention in persons with ID is just evolving and further research is clearly necessary. This research can draw on the existing evidence from other fall prevention areas, especially the work carried out with the general older population.

As stated by Finlayson, a useful next step would be the development of a consensus on the definitions and methodology that should underpin future fall prevention research with persons with ID.

This analysis of the literature examines the implications of the changes in the National Health Service workforce and the ramifications for multi‐professional working practices, patient care and delivery of health services. Changes in medical working practices and education, together with the increasing numbers of doctors, have resulted in proposals for nurses to extend their role and the removal of professional restrictions. Whilst the numbers of nurses in the workforce have marginally increased, the qualified nurse ratio has declined, as has the balance between medical and registered nurses. Few attempts have been made to evaluate these changes in relation to the quality of service and patient outcomes. The changing roles of nurses and their value need to be quantified. Demographic trends, together with international shortages and the lack of educational capacity have also been understated. Adequate and accurate workforce information should be regularly collated and analysed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the language and cultural assumptions that government uses when proposing policy reforms for the financing of later life, especially in promoting the financial capability of citizens. The author asks what the implications of this political construction are for society.

The author examines UK government policy documents from the foundation of the Financial Services Authority in 1997 until 2013. The author analyses these documents to understand the discourses of government for the financing of later life, how powerful these discourses are, and what influence they have on policy and society.

The paper shows that the government considers the promotion of the financial capability agenda to be a solution to structural problems in the provision of old age welfare. By controlling the discourse, non-market-based discussions of welfare are closed and any need for examination of the structural causes of inequality in old age is made invisible. The discourse prevents critique of the individualisation of risk and market provided welfare and service delivery, and failures of policy become the failures of individuals as both consumers and regulators.

The financial capability agenda sounds so sensible and has enrolled so many different organisations in its delivery that it is rare to reflect on the cultural and political assumptions that lie behind these discourses. When these are analysed, the author observes that individualised discourses surrounding money and welfare in later life are so powerful that more collective solutions to issues of financial welfare are closed off from public debate and discussion.

THE new library building has been open for six months now. It is pleasantly situated in an area of new buildings, and occupies a prominent island site just on the edge of the shopping centre. The old library was in the middle of a shopping area, and it has been interesting to note that our removal from that site has had a more considerable effect on the traffic pattern than one would have thought.

THE London and Home Counties Branch is fortunate in having close at hand watering places which can house its Autumn or other Conferences conveniently. Hove in fair weather in October is a place of considerable charm; it has many varieties of hotel, from the very expensive to the modest; it is used to conferences and the hospitality of the Town Hall is widely known. This year's conference was focused in the main on problems of book‐selection which, as one writer truly says, is the main purpose of the librarian because all his possibilities hang upon it. The papers read are valuable because they appear to be quite unvarnished accounts of the individual practice of their writers. Of its kind that of Mr. Frank M. Gardner is a model and a careful study of it by the library worker who is in actual contact with the public might be useful. For his methods the paper must be read; they are a clever up‐to‐minute expansion of those laid down in Brown's Manual with several local checks and variations. Their defects are explained most usefully; there is no examination of actual books before purchase and bookshops are not visited, both of which defects are due to the absence in Luton of well‐stocked bookshops; a defect which many sizeable towns share. We find this remark significant: “The librarian of Luton in 1911 had a book‐fund of £280 a year for 30,000 people. I have nearly £9,000 for 110,000. But the Librarian in 1911 was a better book‐selector than we are. He had to be, to give a library service at all. Every possible purchase had to be looked at, every doubt eliminated.” We deprecate the word “better”; in 1911 book‐selection was not always well done, but Brown's methods could be carried out if it was thought expedient to do the work as well as it could be done. The modern librarian and his employers seem to have determined that the whole of the people shall be served by the library; that books shall be made available hot from the press, with as few exclusions as possible. No librarian willingly buys rubbish; but only in the largest libraries can a completely comprehensive selection practice be maintained. Few librarians can be quite satisfied to acquire their books from lists made by other people although they may use them for suggestions. How difficult is the problem Mr. Gardner demonstrates in connexion with books on Bridge; a shelf of apparently authoritative books might possibly contain not one that actually met the conditions of today. If this could be so in one very small subject, what might be the condition of a collection covering, or intended to cover, all subjects? Librarians have to be realists; orthodox methods do not always avail to deal with the cataract of modern books; but gradually, by cooperative methods, mechanical aids and an ever‐increasing staff devoted to this, the principal library job, much more may be done than is now possible.

In our last ‘Notes and News’ we made an unfortunate mistake. In writing on the poetry section of the School Library Association's book list Fiction, Verse and Legend we referred to the Bodley Head series of poetry for the young as ‘now regrettably out of print’. Before making this categorical statement we had referred to the Bodley Head's current catalogue ‘with complete back‐list’, and had failed to find any reference to the series, but we had also failed to notice the comparatively insignificant sentence on page ii of the cover: ‘Children's books are listed in a separate catalogue.’

Internships are becoming a more common feature of the career paths of young people, however there has been little consideration of how people learn on internships. The purpose of this paper is report on the experiences of interns and their supervisors on a research internship programme.

This study analyses the experiences of interns and their supervisors on a research internship programme, using communities of practice as a theoretical framework. In total, six interns and six supervisors were interviewed approximately six to eight months after the internships were completed.

Extreme types of experience in the internships are illustrated by four cases derived from the interviews: optimal conditions for development; intern non‐development; supervisor frustration; and mutual dissatisfaction.

Although the research is exploratory and limited to the experience of a small group of interns and their supervisors in one setting, it suggests that characteristics of the intern (such as motivation to learn) and the supervisor (e.g. willingness to provide support) can reduce or enhance the learning and development that is achieved during internships.

This paper questions implicit assumptions that internships are always positive and valuable learning experiences.

Chronic health conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes are higher in individuals with learning disabilities and significantly affect both quality of life and longevity. Healthy eating is an important factor in preventing these chronic conditions. The study reported here explored the role paid carers played in promoting healthy eating and how they managed the daily dilemma of balancing residents’ right to make unhealthy food choices against carers’ “duty of care”.

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with a purposive sample of six residential paid carers. Interviews were transcribed and then analysed using a thematic approach.

This small study highlights the challenges that staff face when balancing food choice against “duty of care”. It highlights that when working with less able residents, carers are motivated by “best interests”, to place boundaries and restrictions on food access and choice. It confirms previous studies that increased levels of choice for higher ability residents, often results in less healthy food choices. The study describes a lack of policy, guidance and specific training for paid carers which results in them using their personal subjective values as a basis for decision making.

Since the publication of “Valuing People” (Department of Health, 2001) the core principles of residential services changed direction towards independence and choice. This study expands our knowledge on how paid carers make sense of the everyday conflicts between choice and “duty of care” when residents continue to make unhealthy food choices affecting their physical health.

Interventions that promote both mental and physical wellbeing have been advocated for people with mental health difficulties, as they have been found to engage less in healthy behaviours and have lower levels of physical fitness. However, no optimal approach to facilitate this undertaking has been identified. The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of people with psychological distress who accessed a social enterprise that fosters the building of positive social networks in the community, as part of a personalised recovery programme. The intention was to gain an insight into its therapeutic effect in relation to mental and physical health.

An exploratory survey design was undertaken with a purposive sample of 50 individuals who had attended the enterprise. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis were employed to analyse the data from both closed and open-ended questions.

The wellbeing service appeared to provide a supportive environment that offered people access to social networks through their participation in local services and activities. Fostering participants’ active participation, connection building and the ability to make meaningful contributions helped to facilitate health behaviours that had a positive impact on their health and wellbeing.

This study highlights the potential role of a social enterprise in optimising the social context for promoting the health and wellbeing of people with mental health difficulties.