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The purpose of this paper is to derive from an on-going, innovative, project to explore the concept, and application, of “recovery” in the care and clinical management of patients detained in one UK high-security hospital.

Utilising a qualitative, action research, methodology the aim was to involve forensic mental health nurses in a collaborative, client-centred approach to identification and resolution of dilemmas in the process of planning care for offender-patients.

In this context the authors identify constraints and contradictions involved in employing recovery principles in institutions critics refer to as part of the disciplinary apparatus of psychiatric and social control; where the taken for granted lives, and relations, of an incarcerated population are measured by the calendar, not the clock.

Protective practices remain highly relevant in high-secure practice. Safety, an important value for all can by and large be achieved through recovery approaches. The humanistic elements of recovery can offer up safe and useful methods of deploying the mental health nurse on the ward. Many nurses have the prerequisite approach but there remains a wide scope to enhance those skills. Many see the approach as axiomatic though nurse education often prepares nurses with a biomedical view of the ward.

Currently, philosophical tenets of recovery are enshrined in contemporary health policy and professional directives but, as yet, have not been translated into high-secure settings. Drawing on preliminary findings, attention is given to the value of socially situated approaches in challenging historic dominance of a medical model.

It is concluded that recovery could be a forerunner of reforms necessary for the continued relevance of high-secure care into the twenty-first century.

This research is located in high-secure setting. The social situation is marked by the extent of the isolation involved. A value is in this situation. First it is akin to the isolation of the tribe utilised by many anthropologists for their ability to adopt the “social laboratory” status to test out theories of behaviour in industrial society. The authors urge others to utilise this research in this way. Second, the situation represents the locus of so many of societies dilemmas, paradoxes and fears that moral issues morph from what is the mundane in wider society. In this way humanistic approaches are tested via action research with nurses in some rigouous ways.

The authors offer up an example of recovery in a high-secure setting. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how an individual account of recovery and the academic literature offer up related and important perspectives that have serious clinical utility.

First the context is outlined. The biographical account is then deployed to describe the experience of being detained in an English high-secure facility using recovery as a framework for elucidation. This is often referred to in recovery as accessing the views of the “expert by experience”. In a thematic way this author details his understanding of recovery, what worked and what did not. This account is then contrasted with the academic literature and research at the same site. Social anthropology acts as the theoretical backdrop. This debate informs some clinical implications and issues for practice.

Recovery can be a highly relevant concept in a high-secure context. The author found that the biographical account of the “patient” can offer the observer some insights for practice. The authors noted that the collective themes of previous research where consistent to this account. The authors found the use of recovery principles helped the person receiving care fulfil his potential. Nevertheless, forensic recovery implies a forensic past. This complicates recovery and placed limits on the own use of the principles.

The authors argue that recovery is highly relevant to the context and particularly important to people who are often stigmatized for multiple reasons including their, “illness”, their “crime”, and their social situation. The paper implies that forensic recovery is more problematic than mainstream recovery. Key events mark out issues.

This is the first co-produced paper surrounding recovery in high-secure care.

Special hospitals are notorious for their social isolation. In this sense they are not unlike tribal societies. These hospitals, like their tribal counterparts, are ripe for local time reckoning to emerge. A previous study that focussed on tribal societies is used here to illustrate socio‐temporal issues ‐ primarily because of their social isolation, which is comparable with the isolation from wider society of the special hospital, a factor that is essential for local time reckoning to emerge at any significant level.

The British countryman is a well‐known figure; his rugged, obstinate nature, unyielding and tough; his part in the development of the nation, its history, not confined to the valley meadows and pastures and uplands, but nobly played in battles and campaigns of long ago. His “better half”—a term as true of yeoman stock as of any other—is less well known. She is as important a part of country life as her spouse; in some fields, her contribution has been even greater. He may grow the food, but she is the provider of meals, dishes, specialties, the innovating genius to whom most if not all British food products, mostly with regional names and now well‐placed in the advertising armentarium of massive food manufacturers, are due. A few of them are centuries old. Nor does she lack the business acumen of her man; hens, ducks, geese, their eggs, cut flowers, the produce of the kitchen garden, she may do a brisk trade in these at the gate or back door. The recent astronomical price of potatoes brought her a handsome bonus. If the basic needs of the French national dietary are due to the genius of the chef de cuisine, much of the British diet is due to that of the countrywoman.

Secure mental health services in one UK region have acted within a network to develop a range of involvement practices. A new quality benchmarking tool has been created to appraise the implementation of these involvement practices. The purpose of this paper is to report upon a qualitative evaluation of this development.

Staff and service users involved in the co-production of the benchmarking tool were engaged in a series of focus groups and participatory inquiry approaches enacted in the course of scheduled network meetings. Data thus collected was subject to thematic analysis.

Four distinct themes were identified which were titled: Taking time, taking care; The value not the label; An instrument of the network; and All people working together. These are discussed in relation to recent theorising of co-production.

Effectively, this study represents a case study of developments within one region. As such, the findings may have limited transferability to other contexts.

Staff and service users can work together effectively to the benefit of each other and overall forensic services. The benchmarking tool provides a readymade mechanism to appraise quality improvements.

Despite a prevailing culture of competition in wider health-care policy, cooperation leads to enhanced quality.

The benchmarking tool is a unique development of a longstanding involvement network, demonstrating the positive implications for enacting co-production within secure services.

“It is generally accepted that the food industry must be scientifically based to cope with the problems, particularly of public health, which arise as new processes of growing, manufacturing, packaging and preserving food depart even further from traditional ways.”

The purpose of this paper is to provide an in‐depth understanding of the lived experience of sex discrimination from the perspective of women in the Wal‐Mart case and unravels the daily mechanisms through which sex discrimination takes place.

One hundred and ten in‐depth statements from women who are current and former employees of Wal‐Mart, describing in detail their work experience, were employed as the main source of data. We have carried out a detailed content analysis of these in‐depth interviews identifying the mechanisms of sex discrimination.

Findings identify the specific mechanisms through which sex discrimination takes place. In the context of the current sex discrimination case, the paper provides a rich body of evidence in unraveling the everyday mechanisms of sex discrimination. It observes that instead of individual events, at important thresholds, sex discrimination is a result of small, everyday acts and gendered assumptions, which often appear supportive and harmless.

The richness of the data provides the unique, empirical opportunity to observe the process in detail, but this paper focuses exclusively on the process, and the end‐results remain outside the scope of the paper.

The paper provides a very useful source of information and practical advice for women in the labor force in identifying the supportive, nice and harmless mechanisms and everyday experience of sex discrimination.

This paper exclusively focuses on the process and identifies the mechanisms of sex discrimination using a rich source of qualitative data. It offers empirical evidence in identifying the daily assumptions and everyday mechanisms of sex discrimination. Sex discrimination in the everyday lives are carried out in disguise of harmless, nice and often supportive behavior; therefore this paper offers explanations as to why many women stay in these exploitative jobs as long as they do.