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Andrew Webster is a regular contributor to A Life in the Day. His personal reflections concern his changing understanding of the relationship between his own alcoholism and mental health problems over the last five years. He suggests that physicians need to understand why both conditions need to be treated for either to improve.

Andrew Webster is a writer and innovator with a special interest in increasing employment opportunities for people with mental health problems. He was for many years Director of the charity Talent to Work and now works freelance as an adviser to Government and agencies involved in delivering services to disabled people. In this article he contrasts his own first experience of the benefits system with a more recent episode. The lessons he draws from differences contain important messages for those responsible for managing the welfare system.

Andrew Webster needs no introduction to readers of A Life in the Day. In this article he draws on years of experience as a manager, employer and user of mental health services to propose a radically different way of engaging with empyloers' poor management of psychiatric disability. In essence he suggests that much of our work on vocational rehabilitation and employment support is wasted because we have failed to engage with employers on their own ground. His solution — a new kind of service for employers. Read on.

Andrew Webster charts his own journey from a severe mental breakdown and the loss of a successful career to running a totally new business in the non‐profit sector, creating employment for people like himself.

This paper aims to chart the journey to Investors in People gold of Cambridge-based tax, legal and accountancy company, Websters.

It examines the firm’s policies and approaches, in particular, in the areas of training, teamwork, empowerment and flexible working.

It emphasizes the importance of openness, mutual respect and shared values at the company.

It reveals that employees set their own development programs, which need not be directly related to their role in the company, although they must benefit the business.

It explains how flexible working has been built into the structure of the company from the start.

It describes how a successful business develops, supports and motivates its team.

The nutrition and eating habits of women in a secure psychiatric service were surveyed using in vivo participation, observation and self‐report procedures. It was predicted that high levels of obesity were partly related to unhealthy eating preferences, over‐consumption of food and environmental factors that supported an unhealthy lifestyle. The results indicated an obesogenic environment in which patients made unhealthy food choices to supplement meals. Post‐survey initiatives have led to increased satisfaction with a healthier and more palatable diet and proactive attempts to help patients engage with a therapeutic and healthier lifestyle to address obesity. The importance of environmental change, education and motivational strategies to engage patients is highlighted.