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This paper gives an overview of the ‘non‐professionally affiliated’ (NPA) workforce in mental health in relation to their education, training and development. Some comparison is made with the current situation for the key professions in mental health. We argue that the NPA workforce is an increasingly significant and important part of the workforce and that attention needs to be paid to the construction of an overall development and qualification pathway for these workers, who embody many of the strengths of generic mental health work and have been found to be of great value to service users and their families.

Have you read something that has changed your life, made you see things in a totally different way or captured your own experiences so beautifully that you felt absolutely validated, that everything suddenly made sense? A life in the day will devote its book (or article) reviews in the coming year to giving readers the chance to share their recommended reading in 250‐500 words. Do get in touch if this stirs something in your memory.

Occupational therapy is a crucial part of the recovery agenda and social inclusion for people who experience mental ill health. Occupational therapists strive to support individuals to realise their potential by enabling them to participate in and contribute to society. Increasing someone's confidence by involvement with voluntary groups, work or training helps recovery. The importance and potential contribution of occupational therapy can be misunderstood or overlooked.

In a career that spans four decades, Wayne Emery describes his life spent to date within the housing sector and the changes that he has witnessed to how services are delivered. In a refreshing way, he describes relatively recent policy moves and how the sector ‐ in Wales and elsewhere ‐ must continue to change to meet older people's wishes and needs.

Many physically challenged users cannot interact with a computer through a conventional keyboard and mouse. They may interact with a computer through one or two switches with the help of a scanning mechanism. In this paper we present a new scanning technique based on clustering screen objects and then compare it with two other scanning systems by using a simulator. The analysis shows that the best scanning system is a type of block scanning that divides the screen in four equal sized partitions for four iterations and then switches to eight‐directional scanning. However, with a more accurate target acquisition process, the cluster scanning technique is found to outperform other scanning systems.

The Mental Capacity Advocacy Project (MCAP) with older people is a three‐year pilot project funded by the Department of Health and Age Concern England; the pilot phase of this project is due to finish in October 2009. In this article, the MCAP co‐ordinator, Neil Mapes, highlights some of the voices from the project, discusses some of the emerging issues with the Mental Capacity Act (2005), and highlights the MCAP resources and key messages from the work to date.