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It has proved useful in studies of the personal social services, and in other areas of social policy, to make a distinction between final and intermediate outputs. Final outputs measure changes in individual client well‐being compared with changes in well‐being in the absence of a caring intervention. In other words, final outputs measure the degree of success of a service or a care unit in meeting its client‐level policy objectives, where due consideration is paid to client states had care not been available. In contrast, intermediate outputs are operationally defined in terms of the care services themselves rather than the effects of these services on clients.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

Archie Meaders is the training manager for an organisation just like yours. His boss, “the manager”, is just like your boss — overworked, irascible and wary of new ideas — but deep down he's alright — if you know how to handle him. For some months Archie had wanted to introduce creativity training into the company. He had had some experience as a facilitator in creative problem‐solving workshops from his previous job and felt that there was a lot of creative potential in the company which was not being tapped. One Wednesday evening he invited the manager for a drink after work to soften him up to the idea…

The three channels we use for our thoughts – Visual, Hearing and Feeling (VHF) – are described, and witty suggestions are made to assist trainers in optimising the attention and retention abilities of trainees.

There is more to what we say than the actual words we use; managers should make sure they are familiar with basic paralinguistics.

A couple of years ago I met a man who was to become a good friend of mine. I remember that first meeting very well. I was at a large business conference in London and he was one of the speakers. After the last session of the day, I caught up with him as he was leaving and invited him to have a drink with me. We talked for over three hours and I was sorry when he said he had to go. I thanked him for a fascinating and stimulating conversation and took the liberty of asking him whether we could meet again (he was a well‐known writer and lecturer and extremely busy) and to my delight he agreed. Later that evening, reflecting on the meeting, I suddenly realised that my new‐found friend had hardly said a word during those three hours. He is one of those people who are artists in making other people talk about themselves and that was why I found him so fascinating. Of course, since then I have got my own back and learned a lot about him too. But at that first meeting, he got me to like him simply by being interested in me.

There is an old adage which points out “it's not what you say, it's the way that you say it”. Of all the various types of “body language” that are currently being toted as conveying up to 75 per cent of the “real” meaning of any communication, paralinguistics have received the least attention. And yet, in Western European languages at any rate, the non‐verbal aspects of speech play an immensely important part in conveying to the listener what is really on a speaker's mind or what his “reality map” is like. Paralinguistics, or the way we say what is on our mind, can be divided into any number of headings but for simplicity's sake I have come up with seven categories — timing, emotional tone/inflection, speech errors, national or regional accent, choice of words/sentence structure, verbal “tics” and tonic accent. I will discuss each of these paralinguistic categories in turn giving examples and quoting research studies.

Multimedia technology has been the object of hype for a number of years now. But what is it really? Is it a viable commercial solution or simply a fringe technology with no real benefit to the average end‐user? The glossy description of multimedia is that it is the mix of sound and vision just like television — but it's more than that, because it is interactive and it has great appeal in its application as a method for companies to produce top‐notch, all‐singing, all‐dancing presentations: taking graphics, voice, music and video and manipulating them to provide three‐dimensional PC‐generated business shows. This technology is incredible but its promise has yet to be realised.

IN ANY TYPE OF LITERATURE it is easier in retrospect to pick out the notable writers of a period from the mass of lesser writers. With any type of current literature it is almost impossible to assess what will still be read or valued by later generations. This is as true of children's literature, and particularly of a more specific branch such as the family story, which tends to date rapidly. This is confirmed by the new book list for children, published by the Library Association: First Choice, which has been eagerly awaited. Praise should be generously lavished on the compilers, who have had to decide courageously which authors have to go overboard and have also had the arduous task of selecting a representative twenty‐one authors of family stories, approximately ten per cent of the list of fiction for older children.

Against a background of world‐wide recession, there are now definite signs that the chemical industry is again on the upturn. But optimism is clouded by persistent problems of overcapacity, price instability and the difficulty of retaining acceptable profit margins. One possible solution—taken up by ICI—is a commodity exchange offering greater flexibility on contracts. Report by Roger Eglin.