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The sequelae of acquired brain injury can lead to a complex array of risks. This research explores professionals' perspectives on those risks, focussing on how psycho‐social risks are assessed and managed.

A self completion questionnaire was designed, and distributed to a range of professionals working in brain injury services.

A total of 177 participants completed an anonymous questionnaire. Principal components analysis produced three factors, which were given the labels “User‐friendliness”, “Person‐centeredness” and “Coherence”. Inconsistencies were identified in approaches to risk assessment and management. Participants also reported particular beneficial approaches, such as multi‐disciplinary discussions, and using assessments to guide rehabilitation.

The convenience sampling approach limits the generalisablity of the findings. However, the study was adequately powered, reliable, and valid.

The findings of this research, existing literature, and clinical experience are drawn together in a proposed model for managing risk. This model, which incorporates the three factors identified through statistical analysis could guide effective risk management, documentation and associated procedures. The model presents a framework for service design and provision, as well as providing a focus for future research.

It is likely that more active engagement in risk assessment on the part of professionals, services, and those who access services, will be engendered if the process is able to become more user‐friendly, person‐centred, and coherent, across and within service provision.

Despite legislative calls for regular training and effective communication in relation to risk, this is not the routine experience of professionals working in brain injury services. The findings of the present research offer a new, structured process, for overcoming the challenge for embedding legislation and research findings into practice.

Neuropsychologically informed rehabilitation (NIR) is one approach to supporting people with intellectual disabilities, cognitive impairment and challenging behaviour. This study aims to evaluate a five-day training course in NIR for staff working with adult male offenders with intellectual disabilities in a high secure hospital. The impacts on both the staff who undertook the training and the patients with challenging behaviour were explored.

Participants were psychology, nursing and day services staff and male patients. The staff completed a post-training questionnaire and three measures at pre-NIR training, post-NIR training and one-year follow-up. Patients completed four questionnaire measures within the same periods.

NIR training was positively evaluated by staff. Staff members’ perceived efficacy in working with challenging behaviour significantly increased post-training which was maintained at follow-up. Thematic analysis showed that the training staff members built their confidence, knowledge and skills. Because of these being high to start with, the study could not evidence statistically significant changes in these. Thematic analysis yielded two main themes, namely, benefits and quality of training, each with their own subthemes. The impacts of the training on patients were difficult to assess related to various factors.

The knowledge and confidence measures used were limited in scope with an experienced staff group and required development.

NIR training could assist staff in other secure and community settings in working with people with intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviours.

This study positively contributes to an area that requires more research.

The factors which influence costs of production of food and the prices to the consumer have changed dramatically during this century, but especially since the establishment of trading systems all over the world. Gone are the days when the simple expedients of supply and demand alone governed the situation. The erosion of these principles began at the turn of the century, mainly as a result of the introduction by the rapidly developing industrial power of the USA to protect her own industries against the cheaper products of European countries. They introduced the system of tariffs on imported manufactured goods; it grew and eventually was made to apply to wide sectors of industry. European countries retaliated but the free trade policy of Britain's Liberal government was making the country a dumping ground for all other country's cheap products and surpluses.

The case, briefly reported in the last issue of BFJ, an appeal to a Milk and Dairies Tribunal arising out of a local authority's refusal to grant a licence to a milk distributor because he failed to comply with a requirement that he should provide protective curtains to his milk floats, was a rare and in many ways, an interesting event. The Tribunal in this case was set up under reg. 16(2) (f), Milk (Special Designation) Regulations, 1963, constituted in accordance with Part I, clause 2 (2), Schedule 4 of the Regulations. Part II outlines procedure for such tribunals. The Tribunal is similar to that authorized by S.30, Food and Drugs Act, 1955, which deals with the registration of dairymen, dairy farms and farmers, and the Milk and Dairies (General) Regulations, 1959. Part II, Schedule 2 of the Act provided for reference to a tribunal of appeals against refusal or cancellation of registration by the Ministry, but of producers only. A local authority's power to refuse to register or cancellation contained in Part I, Schedule 2 provided for no such reference and related to instances where “public health is or is likely to be endangered by any act or default” of such a person, who was given the right of appeal against refusal to register, etc., to a magistrates' court. No such limitation exists in respect of the revoking, suspending, refusal to renew a licence under the Milk (Special Designation) Regulations, 1963; an appeal against same lies to the Minister, who must refer the matter to a tribunal, if the person so requests. This occurred in the case under discussion.

Pre‐employment medical examinations with appropriate testing are required in many industries—a basic tenet of Occupational Medicine—and it has long been a recommendation of many in community medicine and environmental health for those food handlers whose close contact with open food, aspects of its preparation, processing, sale, exposure for sale, make their personal health important and in prevention of diseases and may constitute a health hazard to food consumers. Epidemiological studies have revealed too many instances of a human source of disease, especially in milk and water, for this to be denied or under‐estimated. Food poisioning outbreaks caused by a carrier, of chronic or limited duration, enable those investigating such outbreaks to see there could be advantages in medical screening of certain employees especially in certain areas of food trades. The main problem is to decide the extent of the discipline and who should be subject to it. The fact that by far the majority of the examinations and tests will prove negative should not be seen as removing the need for the service. After all, there are a number of similar circumstances in public health. Meat inspection, for example, in which a 100% inspection of all food animals slaughtered for human food is now fully established, it is not suggested that inspections should in any way be reduced despite the fact that a number of the diseases, eg., tuberculosis, no longer occurs as it once did, which was the prime cause of meat inspection being brought into being. Other areas where routine medical examinations reveal satisfactory health with only a few isolated cases requiring attention, is the school medical service. Here, the “de‐bunkers” have had some success, but if children are not regularly examined at vulnerable age levels and especially in between where the occasion demands, there is no question that much will be missed and ill‐health progress to a chronic state.

One of the major developments of the post‐War years has been the rise of consumer protection ‘watchdog’ committees galore, a flood of legislation and completely changed enforcement methods by existing local authority officers who to all and intents have become a completely new service. Voluntary agencies, national and local, based on the local High Street, have appointed themselves the watchdogs of the retail trade; legislation and central departments, the larger scene. The new service has proved of inestimable value in the changed conditions; it continues to develop. When shopping was a personal transaction, with the housewife making her purchases from the shopkeeper or his staff on the opposite side of the counter; when each was well known to the other and the relationship had usually lasted for many years, often from one generation to the next, things were very different, complaints few, unsatisfactory items instantly replaced, usually without question. This continuing state of equanimity was destroyed by the retail revolution and new methods of advertising and marketing. Now, the numbers of complaints dealt with by consumer protection and environmental health departments of local authorities are truly enormous. We have become a nation of “complainers,” although in all conscience, we have much to complain about. Complaints cover the widest possible range of products and services, of which food and drink form an integral component. The complaints to enforcement authorities include many said to be unjustified, but from the reports of legal proceedings under relevant enactments, it is obvious that the bulk of them now originate from consumer complaints. Not all complainants, however, relish the thought of the case going before the courts. Less is heard publicly of complaints to the numerous voluntary bodies. Enforcement authorities see complaints in terms of infringements of the law, although their role as honest broker, securing recompense to the aggreived customer, has become important; a few departments being able to claim that they secured reimbursements and replacements of value totalling upwards of amounts which annually run into six figures. The broker role is also that adopted by voluntary bodies but with much less success since they lack the supporting authority of legal sanction.

There are various Sections of the new Food and Drugs ct which are not wholly easy to interpret. One of these Section 47, the side‐note of which is worded “misuse designation ‘cream’ in relation to cream substitutes”. ow does this Section alter the law relating to cakes, ins and biscuits sold under a description or designation cluding the word “cream”?

The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on Stocks and Slater’s paper, “Training in positive behavioural support: increasing staff self-efficacy and positive outcome expectations”.

This is a narrative review of staff training in positive behaviour support (PBS) and challenging behaviour, drawing on Stocks and Slater’s paper and the core staff competencies outlined in the PBS Competence Framework (PBS Coalition, 2015).

Taking into consideration multiple outcome measures, including staff outcomes such as self-efficacy, changes in staff behaviour, and the impact on quality of life for service users, may provide a broader insight into the effects of staff training. Supports and systems such as hands-on training, supervision, and practice leadership are also important factors that are likely to lead to positive service user and staff outcomes.

This commentary reflects on Stocks and Slater’s paper in the broader context of staff training outcomes and factors that contribute to high-quality services for people with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour.

This paper sets out to investigate the biotypes of Campylobacter jejuni and C. coli and the serotypes of C. jejuni present in broilers from selected small retail processors in six counties in Trinidad.

Samples were plated on blood‐free Campylobacter CCDA, incubated at 42°C in 8‐10 per cent CO₂ in a CO₂ incubator and isolates were biotyped using the Lior scheme and serotyped using 25 Penner heat‐stable antisera by the passive hemagglutination method.

Amongst the 743 C. jejuni isolates biotyped, 85.3 per cent and 14.7 per cent belonged to biotype I and II respectively compared with C. coli isolates where 84.3 per cent were grouped as biotype I and 15.7 per cent were biotype II amongst a total of 681 isolates. The difference in frequency of both biotypes amongst C. jejuni and C. coli was statistically significant (p<0.05; χ²). Of the 52 isolates of C. jejuni, 48 (92.3 per cent) were typable. The predominant serotype Penner HS O:31 accounted for 19.2 per cent of the isolates tested, while Penner HS O:2, the predominant serotype recovered from clinical cases world‐wide, accounted for 5.8 per cent. Originality/value – The biotypes detected in Campylobacter isolates from chickens are similar with those earlier isolated from other livestock in Trinidad. However, this is the first documentation of serotypes of C. jejuni in this country. Serotypes O:31 and O:2 have been isolated from clinical cases world‐wide and may have clinical implications in Trinidad. It is, however, pertinent to mention that until C. jejuni is routinely serotyped and reporting of human clinical cases of campylobacteriosis in the country is improved, the clinical significance of C. jejuni serotypes cannot be fully appreciated.