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Alongside teachers, community nurses have been identified as having an important role to play in the provision of school‐based personal, social and health education (PSHE) and sex and relationships education (SRE). However, there currently exist few programmes of preparation for this work that recognise the specific contribution of community nurses to SRE. This paper reports on findings from a formative evaluation of a pilot certification scheme for community nurses involved in SRE provision and recently implemented in England. The evaluation sought specifically to access views about the value of the educational experience in preparing school nurses to better fulfil their SRE role.

During the implementation of the pilot scheme, 124 semi‐structured interviews were conducted with a range of stakeholders, including national players, local scheme support leads, nurses participating in the pilot scheme, nurse managers and other colleagues. Data gathering adopted a close‐focus, largely qualitative approach. Partial transcription took place and a thematic analysis was carried out using constant comparative method.

Findings suggest that a well‐designed scheme of the type described is likely to be well received by community nurses, but that ways need to be found to ensure good synergy between local health and education services in the support of SRE in schools. At the same time, there is a need to respect the unique contribution of community nurses and the skills that they bring to this work.

This paper raises awareness and highlights issues surrounding a pilot certification scheme for community nurses involved in sex and relationships in education.

A new Gallup poll finds that Americans believe that financial support for public libraries should be double the current level. This belief was shared by all four groups polled: Caucasians, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and Community Leaders.

This article describes the background to the What Works initiative launched by Barnardo's in the early 1990s, with a focus on the What Works for Children series of reports published from 1995 onwards. The author describes the intellectual and social context of the initiative, the approach taken, and some of the barriers to and levers for the adoption of research in practice are identified. The article describes more briefly the ways in which those in the Research and Development (R&D) team at Barnardo's worked towards knowledge transfer, both inside and outside the organisation. The article concludes with reflections on the impact of Barnardo's initiatives, the journey still to be travelled to strengthen the knowledge base of those providing services to children in education, health and social work, and the need for further work both to strengthen the evidence base and to increase synergies between research, policy and practice.

The District Library at Queen Mary's University Hospital, Roehampton provides a comprehensive service to all staff employed by the National Health Service within the boundaries of Richmond, Twickenham and Roehampton Health Authority. In 1987 the library moved into a new building which is shared with the postgraduate medical centre. The stock consists of approximately 3000 books and 180 current journal titles. There is one full‐time librarian and at the time of buying BookshelF‐PC only one assistant for 18 hours a week. There is an annual issue of books of about 3000 and it was becoming increasingly difficult to control the stock. Being so short staffed meant that activities other than stock control, such as inter‐library loans and literature searching took precedence. Overdues were issued very infrequently, and since the readers filled in their own issue slips it was often impossible to match the slip to a book or a reader. There was also no way of keeping a check on readers who were leaving the hospital (and with junior doctors staying only six months, and medical students only six weeks this was important), nor readers who had not completed membership forms before borrowing books. The District Library is part of a cooperative network of libraries within the South West Thames (SWT) Region and already contributed to the union catalogue of books held on the regional database. This database is administered from the SWT Regional Library Service at Guildford using the INMAGIC software; individual library records are sent to Guildford where they are added to the database. Participating libraries receive back a disc to update their own local database of stock and a microfiche copy of the whole database.

The Central Mental Hospital in Ireland is one of the oldest forensic mental health units in Europe. The hospital is currently in the process of transforming from a single inpatient site to a modern national forensic mental health service. Central to this transformation is the need to move from the traditional security‐focused model of care to a model of recovery. The challenge incumbent within this transformation is to incorporate a sophisticated amalgamation of the patients' needs while recognising the broad range of security requirements in a forensic setting. This paper considered that adopting an integrated care pathway (ICP) approach would provide the service with a vehicle to re‐engineer our principles and systems of care. Likewise we hypothesised that the ICP would enable us to consolidate best practices such as multi‐ disciplinary working, structured professional judgement and the involvement of the patient and their carers. Thus far it has afforded us the opportunity to examine many aspects of the care delivered within the service. It has provided a shared understanding of key standards among clinicians, service users and carers that are necessary to implement a quality care pathway. It has certainly not been a stagnant process, and the initial work often bears no resemblance to the current process. In turn, we expect that it will continue to change as the path travelled is as important as the outcome and the ICP becomes a dynamic part of the organisation.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

Educational development is increasingly focussed on quality assurance and enhancement. Individual states/countries have their own mechanisms for assuring the student experience, and this has been accompanied by development of tools (including the UK’s National Student Survey) for capturing student opinion of our efforts. Areas where more work is needed include equity and diversity and it is perhaps time for a fresh approach. In other sectors, International Standards ensure safety, reliability and quality of products and services. Such standards also represent a stakeholder-negotiated (and therefore shared) understanding of ‘good quality’, supporting organisations in accessing new markets and permitting a fair global trade, an approach relevant to higher education. Recent publication of ISO (The International Organization for Standardization) Standard 27500 (the International Standard describing the principles and rationales behind becoming a human-centred organization) seems timely. Encouraging educational institutions to adopt this Standard may offer a strategy for addressing several issues, including internationalisation.