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There is little published literature about the number of home visits provided to patients within forensic intellectual disability units, and there is no published data on variables that affect home visits. There is a need for a baseline audit that can formulate standards for future practice. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper describes the home visit programme within a forensic intellectual disability service, and a baseline audit of the programme. The audit measured the number of home visits, any factors that adversely affect home visits, and the extent of family contact. The authors propose audit standards for evaluation of good practice in this area.

The audit involved 63 patients over a one-year period. In total, 81 per cent of patients had some form of family contact and 54 per cent of patients at least one home visit. However, 19 per cent of patients had no contact with their family due to a variety of reasons. There were no significant differences in the number of home visits between men and women, patients on civil vs criminal sections or those treated “within area” or “out of area”. Patients in rehabilitation wards had significantly more visits than those in low or medium secure.

Conventional wisdom is that reduced family contact is the direct result of patients being placed “out of area”. The results of this audit suggest that, at least in this group, the reasons may be much more nuanced and that the current definition of “out of area” has to be improved to incorporate the actual distance between the patient’s current family home and the service. Audit standards have been proposed to monitor family contact and home visits. Future work should focus on the relationship between family contact and treatment outcomes.

This paper aims to describe how a patient centred recovery approach was implemented in a secure learning disabilities service.

There are no specific tools for measuring recovery in a secure learning disabilities service. The Recovery Star; a measure of individual recovery was adopted for use among the patients. Staff underwent training on the use of the Recovery Star tool after which a multidisciplinary steering group made some modifications to the tool. Training was cascaded to staff throughout the service and use of the Recovery Star tool was embedded in the care programme approach process.

It was found that implementing a recovery approach with the Recovery Star tool was a beneficial process for the service but that services will require a whole systems approach to implementing recovery. Key workers working with patients thought that the structure of the Recovery Star tool opened up avenues for discussing topics covered in the domains of the Recovery Star tool which may otherwise have not been discussed as fully.

The availability of a tool, integrated into existing service processes, e.g. care programme approach and accompanied by a systems approach, equips patients and staff for articulating and measuring the recovery journey.

The paper shows that the Recovery Star tool, embedded in a care programme approach process, equips patients and staff for measuring the recovery journey.

1989 was designated Museums Year to commemorate the centenary of the Museums Association, and unlike many of these PR exercises this one resulted in museums (especially national museums based in London) receiving an unusual amount of coverage in the qualities. Whether stories of protests and problems would have the desired positive effect on actual attendances has not yet been calculated. The unusually sunny weather cannot have helped much either. But the Museums Association itself produced a series of 11 regional guides which if read on the beach or in the pool would have enabled the readers almost to think that they had actually visited the collections described in considerable detail. Too many to note here but a list of all the titles is available from the MA or the Museums and Galleries Commission. Simon Olding's Exploring Museums: London (ISBN 0 11 2904653) and Arnold Wilson's Exploring Museums: The South West (ISBN 0 11 2904696) tackle their areas entertainingly, but their step‐by‐step guides to some of their subjects may soon be outdated as many existing museums are currently undergoing major rearrangements or refurbishments.

IN a period of intense air activity against this country it would be idle to deny that substantial damage has occurred to libraries. In the vicinity of Chaucer House, which itself at the date of writing has suffered no worse than to the extent of a few windows smashed, there has been damage which will cost time and much expense to remedy. University College appears to have suffered heavily, although that part of it devoted to the School of Librarianship remains intact. Libraries at Stepney, Chelsea and Camberwell have suffered to greater or less extent; in some towns delayed action bombs have caused the suspension of the library service. In most cases, however, central and other main libraries have escaped, although librarians have had an anxious time. The National Central Library has had remarkable escapes, and although windows and ceilings have been damaged very few books have been damaged and the Structure as a whole has escaped.

I ENTERED the literary world late in the immediate post‐war years when changes of literary taste and loyalty were already in the air. The first broadcast I gave was, I remember, an attack upon Virginia Woolf. Her books had nurtured me as an adolescent, and I was in reaction against her influence.