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Individuals with an intellectual disability (ID) form a significant minority in the Irish prison population and worldwide prison populations. There is growing recognition that specialist services for such individuals are in need of development. The purpose of this paper is to propose a care pathway for the management of individuals with an ID who present in prison, based on expert elicitation and consensus.

A convenience sample of professionals with a special interest in forensic intellectual disabilities was invited to participate in a Delphi exercise. In total, 12 agreed to participation and 10 subsequently completed the study (83.3 per cent). Expert views were elicited using a semi-structured questionnaire. Content analysis was completed using NVivo 11 software. A care pathway was subsequently proposed, based on the outcomes of the analysis, and circulated to participants for debate and consensus. A consensus was reached on management considerations.

Ten experts across a range of disciplines with a combined experience of 187 years participated in the study. Current provision of care was seen as limited and geographically variable. The vulnerability of prisoners with ID was highlighted. The need for equivalence of care with the community through multidisciplinary input and development of specialist secure and residential placements to facilitate diversion was identified. Consensus was achieved on a proposed care pathway.

This study proposes a care pathway for the assessment and management of prisoners with an ID and is, therefore, potentially relevant to those interested in this topic internationally who may similarly struggle with the current lack of decision-making tools for this setting. Although written from an Irish perspective, it outlines key considerations for psychiatrists in keeping with international guidance and, therefore, may be generalisable to other jurisdictions.

ONE CAN BE forgiven for worrying about the ‘Peter principle’ when taking up a post on the practising side of the profession after nine years teaching librarianship.

A survey of 24 museums of various kinds in Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA sought to identify the processes that these organisations used to manage change. It was hypothesised that those organisations which were assessed by respondents to have achieved successful change outcomes would also have managed the change process in accordance with general guidelines on effective change in the change literature. The general guidelines largely recommend a consultative or participative style of leadership as being most effective for leading change. Recent contingency models relating change leadership style to change strategy predict that participative leadership styles are not always appropriate or effective for leading change, and that under circumstances, exceptions to the general guidelines would apply. However, it was argued that due to the nature of museums as professional bureaucracies, such exceptions are unlikely to occur for the organisations studied in this paper. The findings provided strong support for these general principles of effective change management.

‘EVERY patron of a public library is an individual endowed with free choice. But to what extent is the public library acting as an effective neutraliser of individuality?’

This paper provides an account of Australian immigration in the late twentieth century focusing on labour market and industrial relations issues. The paper chronicles the changing immigration policy framework, from one premised on exclusion to one designed primarily to serve the needs of the domestic labour market. One of the consequences of the policies, more by default than design, has been the transformation of society from a monocultural to a multicultural one. In spite of this migrants from other than mainly English speaking (MES) countries often have poor labour market outcomes, sometimes well after the time of arrival. This group appears to be more adversely affected by the downturn in economic cycles than other migrants or the Australian‐born population. At the industrial relations level trade unions have made a pragmatic, as well as a principled, shift to embrace immigrant workers from non‐MES countries. However the transition from a centralized system of conciliation and arbitration to a more deregulated labour market has compounded the disadvantage suffered by these workers.

THE BOUNDARIES have been set now and re‐organisation has come upon the public library world at its set date, approaching, occurring and passing on, like a lunar eclipse.

I MUST THANK David Gerard for responding so warmly to my review of Mr Murison's The public library in Human world 13; and I must thank Mr Murison for responding to the double onslaught (in NLW March) so effectively. (It was not, by the way, a concerted attack, though Mr Murison might be excused for thinking so, especially in view of his other trials.) And if I gave the impression of thinking of him as rather dim and unquestioning, I must simply apologise; this was not my intention. I chose to review his book because it typifies some of our vast social problems in an exceptionally clear‐cut way; because it demonstrates, through the clarity of its presentation, both the virtues and the limitations of socialised thought. This is not, I think, an insult.

THE RECENT SQUEEZE on local government expenditure has highlighted the dissarray that exists in the public library service in England and Wales, and the extraordinary measures being adopted by some authorities. Some of this disorder can perhaps be attributed to widely‐held attitudes prior to local government reorganisation. As a profession we have never been particularly good at co‐ordinating our approach to library services. Traditionally, many chief librarians looked upon their systems as their own unique empire. There was a deep‐rooted reluctance, perhaps even a fear, of pursuing common policies and practices with a neighbouring authority. The reason for those attitudes is not altogether clear, but they reflected an alarming narrowness of vision within our profession.

This paper focuses on the impact of country and sector effects in Asia Pacific equity market returns. Our study concludes that Asia Pacific market returns are mainly driven by country effects. Accordingly, country diversification is the most useful tool for managing portfolio risk. Recent evidence from developed markets indicates that country effect is no longer dominant and that sector exposure is of increasing significance in managing portfolio risk. We observed the same phenomenon; the difference is that it happened after the crisis period, not during the period as observed in the previous study.