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The purpose of this paper is to explore and highlight the main elements of an autism spectrum disorder assessment in adults. It features significant challenges for the clinical teams responsible to undertake the assessment. This paper aims to explain the importance of the wider needs assessment in accordance to the Autism Act and Autism Strategy.

The paper describes the main symptom domains for an ASD diagnosis, according to the two basic diagnostic manuals. It provides compendious summary of the available diagnostic tools and the significant comorbidities people with ASD present with including other neurodevelopmental disorders, mental or physical health problems, challenging behaviour and risk issues.

The paper proposes that all National Health System professionals should be able to recognise possible signs of ASD and accordingly refer individuals for a comprehensive assessment to secondary services. It highlights the importance of a wider needs assessment as part of a broader approach to addressing the needs of those with suspected ASD.

The paper aims to improve the gaps which remain in the referral and diagnostic process of people affected by ASD.

Through a comprehensive assessment the paper aims to improve the educational, social and personal functioning of people with ASD as well as the quality of life of their parents and carers.

The paper assembles a wide range of relevant considerations in regards to potential ASD in one place, and can be used to inform a comprehensive understanding of the assessment/diagnosis process.

This paper aims to provide an overview of the recent National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) clinical guidance for diagnosis and treatment of adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and to discuss clinical and practical implications.

This is a summary and discussion of the NICE guidance for adults with autism. This includes discussion of relevant related guidance, the need for transition services for young people with ASD, education of professionals, applicability of the guidance to people with intellectual disabilities and challenges related to implementation of the guidance in a changing National Health Service.

The guidance provides an excellent overview of current and state-of-the-art strategies for diagnosis and treatment of ASD-related behaviours, and their level of evidence. In terms of diagnosis, the main recommendation for clinicians is to carry out a comprehensive assessment for adults with suspected autism, taking into account co-morbid mental health problems and potential unmet needs. In addition, NICE makes recommendations regarding pharmacological and psychological interventions and these are discussed. The guidance also makes specific recommendations regarding service design, for example the formation of Autism Strategy Groups. This will hopefully support the development of specialist adult autism services.

This paper provides new insights into the implications of the recently published NICE clinical guidance for autism in adults, relevant for health care professionals, service managers and service users.

Reporting to the police incidents of challenging behaviour displayed by inpatients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and learning disability (LD) represents an important but often controversial issue. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this topic through a brief literature review and the presentation of a clinical case.

Case study and literature review.

The action of reporting to the police can be a useful tool within the therapeutic input provided to patients with ASD and LD who present with challenging behaviour. This can enable staff to feel legally supported, and can promote patients’ learning of social rules, in respect of their rights and duties. The clinical case highlighted that reporting to the police can be effective when it is part of a comprehensive, multi‐professional therapeutic process. This should aim at directing patients towards rehabilitation rather than incarceration. This should also entail the identification of clear pathways and ongoing involvement of patients and families.

Despite the relevance for clinical practice of the above debate, little has been published on this topic. This paper contributes to this discussion through the presentation of a clinical case and by describing how this issue was addressed within a secure inpatient setting.

The landscape of the Probation Service in England and Wales continues to be challenged by issues of priorities, workload, and lack of meaningful relationships between offenders and practitioners. In this climate of uncertainty and ‘transformation’, vulnerable offenders on probation become the ones mostly affected due to management plans and license conditions that do not respond to the variability of their needs. This chapter explores the older individuals on probation and uses the framework of Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) to examine the extent to which it may accommodate the needs of this group of offenders in an otherwise risk-based context. This study draws ideas from previous research of the author and aims to develop the existing limited academic attention that older offenders supervised under specialised probation contexts have received. The structure of the chapter remains doctrinal in nature as a response to the need for a more comprehensive and inclusive perception of the risk of reoffending later in life and its implications for bespoke community reintegration strategies. This approach also allows for theorisation of MAPPA’s multi-agency structure and its prospects for the rehabilitation of older offenders. This study finds that as MAPPA only manages violent and sexual offenders, the ‘older MAPPA offender’ becomes a special category for probation that may exhibit a variety of needs and life circumstances. It thereby becomes even more important for these offenders that a constructive working relationship between them and the probation officer is in place. This supports the latter in appreciating what factors lead the individual to offending later in life, and what interventions may be most effective to address their risk of reoffending as well as their needs in the community.

In The Great Derangement, the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh examines the present inability to understand and represent the scale and violence of the environmental crisis. The book is a passionate awakening call for collective action to drive change, with Ghosh clearly identifying the limits of the present framework of values, which inhibits politicians, industrialists and economists from moving towards a truly sustainable civilization. In the Anthropocene, non-human and post-human factors are raising questions about the concept of a silent Nature that can be domesticated for human advantage and the perspective of continuous progress – both of which have dominated the modern age. Nevertheless, the detailed scientific analysis of the violation of the planet’s limited capacities continues to be refuted, triggering irrational, short-term utilitarian behaviours which are preventing the fundamental changes required for the transition to sustainable development. Artists, philosophers and writers can play an invaluable role in reframing our ways of thinking, filling the gap between scientific knowledge and emotional perception. Pioneering artistic experiments are appearing all over the world, from both well-established and emerging artists, and through collective processes, and this cultural movement is setting the scene for a new wave of eco-entrepreneurs driven by the altruistic mission of saving the planet. As has happened in many previous crises, it is again in the hands of artists to redefine how we perceive ourselves and so to support the emergence of new ideas, new learning, and finally to shape society and the economy around a renewed sense of the future for humankind on Earth.

THE effective little conference of the London and Home Counties Branch of the Library Association at Brighton gave clear proof of the value of and desire for such gatherings. This experience, we are confident, will be understood by our Council and a national conference should be possible in 1946. At Brighton, amongst many good things, from the public lecture by Charles Morgan to the excellent symposium by the Service members, there was the important statement by Mr. Goldsack, Chairman of the National Book League and a well‐known publisher, on the state of British stocks of books. A census made by publishers and booksellers had revealed that some 50,000 basic books, which are required continuously by libraries, schools and the general reading world, are out‐of‐print. It may be recalled that forty years ago James Duff Brown asserted “of real, living works of literary and human interest, there are perhaps not more than 20,000 in the English language,” and if more than twice that number of books are unavailable the condition would seem to be parlous. Of course the quotation we have made is not acceptable today nor is the statement unqualified in the Berwick Sayers' editions of Brown's Manual, but Mr. Goldsack's figures give us furiously to think. We are bound to keep in every town and county a representative collection of books of every age and we do know that there is the insistent demand for current books; for some readers, indeed, this means current fiction; lacking that we are labelled as “useless” by the most vocal part of the community of readers.

What insights might attending to the cyclical history of colonially imposed environmental change experienced by Indigenous peoples offer to critical intellectual projects concerned with race? How might our understanding of race shift if we took Indigenous peoples' concerns with the usurpation and transformation of land seriously? Motivated by these broader questions, in this chapter, I deploy an approach to the critical inquiry of race that I have tentatively been calling anticolonial environmental sociology. As a single iteration of the anticolonial environmental sociology of race, this chapter focuses on Native (American) perspectives on land and experiences with colonialism. I argue that thinking with Native conceptualizations of land forces us to confront the ecomateriality of race that so often escapes sight in conventional analyses. The chapter proceeds by first theorizing the ecomateriality of race by thinking with recent critical theorizing on colonial racialization, alongside Native conceptualizations of land. To further explicate this theoretical argument, I then turn to an historical excavation of the relations between settlers, Natives, and the land in Rhode Island that is organized according to spatiotemporal distinctions that punctuate Native land relations in this particular global region: the Reservation, the Plantation, and the Narragansett.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.