If you got into a train at Euston, and started travelling northwards towards Liverpool, it would be a great surprise if you finished up in Tunbridge Wells. I had the same sense of an impossible change of direction when I learned about Virginia Bottomley's early life and subsequent career. Her mother was a Conservative Education councillor, elected after Virginia Bottomley became an MP, but her uncle was a Labour Cabinet minister and she herself was the Labour candidate in her school's mock election. Then, in the hippy, radical, mid to late Sixties, she went on to read sociology at the University of Essex, surely the most radical of all the university campuses. After graduation, she went to work for Frank Field at the Child Poverty Action Group. Then on to the London School of Economics to train as a social worker, before employment as a full-time social worker for 10 years, first at Brixton and then at the Camberwell Child Guidance Unit. How on earth could all that lead to a safe Conservative seat in Surrey and then to two Cabinet posts in a Tory government, first as Secretary of State for Health and then as Secretary of State for National Heritage?

There is much wisdom in these two essays on dyslexia, by Snowling and by Coltheart and Jackson, as well as a useful and informative summary of many key research findings. Given the fact that debates about the diagnosis and concept of dyslexia have been running for at least the last 40 years (see e.g. Rutter, 1969), and given the immense amount of high-quality empirical research that has been conducted (see e.g. Bryant & Bradley, 1985; Goswami, 1994; Rispens, van Yperen, & Yule, in press), it might be expected that most of the main controversies ought to have been resolved by now. But they have not, as is apparent from the contrasting positions adopted in this forum. It might be hoped that, at least, any well-informed dispassionate reviewer should be able to arbitrate and so decide which view is most valid. Unfortunately, even that is not readily possible. A key problem is that the two papers seem to be starting from different premises and, thereby, tackling a somewhat different issue.

It is a struggle to put these three papers by Slade, James, and Alvarez and Phillips into a common context. Partly I feel that they are like those very humorous events in life that you cannot wait to relay to your friends. Only when you have finished your story and the friends' faces remain politely blank do you realise ‘Oh, you have to have been there’. There is a ‘have to have been there’ quality in all three papers. Together, though, they give us a demonstration of how very wide the concept of play is and how little researched is the area.

Slade's depiction of dramatic play conjures up a picture for us most vividly, perhaps. The children ‘domino marching’ we can almost see. Personally, I can smell the gym shoes. His idea that improvisation can be a chance to ‘spit out the evil’, his experience that 13-year-olds enjoy role plays about ‘Bullying, jobs, sex, relationships, interviews, how to deal with step-parents’, these may be relatively useful facts — but the shadow of his undoubtedly charismatic self looms large. He makes interesting and provocative claims but he shows little inclination to discipline his arguments or to place his observations in any wider context of other observers. Perhaps he's just being dramatic. I found myself interested in Slade's division between Projected Play, where activity centres around the objects into which action is projected, and Personal Play, which involves whole-body role play. In developmental terms, I am used to thinking of the use of symbols as a superior, more complex form of activity, whereas children I see who can only play out their games using their whole body are often less able to reflect on the action. One can see, however, that role play with room for reflection and digestion of the experience could bring the actor very close to the emotional experiences acted out.

The editor of Points of Law welcomes articles on topics related to the legal context of work related to child mental health, news about recent legal developments (new laws, official codes of practice, important judicial decisions), commentaries on these, and suggestions of topics for coverage in future issues.

At her suggestion, I arranged to meet Anula in the late afternoon, in a pub above John Menzies at Euston Station. As she moved gently towards my table, scholarly-looking and draped in her sari, making her way between chrome furniture, pints of lager, and urgent football and shopping chat, she seemed a character from one of those novels about the Raj, recently displaced from an ancient civilisation to a crass, modern world.

This paper describes attempts to implement a ‘functional analysis’ approach to the treatment of severe self-injurious behaviour in a 4-year-old boy living at home. Although a degree of success is reported, problems in systematically applying assessment and intervention procedures are described. The paper discusses the successes and limitations of such an approach in the home environment and in a crisis situation.

This paper describes the development of a new assessment service in Southampton for children with autism and related disorders. The evolution of the service is described and the multidisciplinary assessment process is outlined. The response of families to the service is evaluated and the current status of the service is examined critically. The importance of forging good working links with other local services for children is emphasised.

This paper discusses the difficulties researchers are likely to encounter when assessing the self-concept of children with Down syndrome. It describes four potentially appropriate assessment methods: projective techniques, nonverbal and/or pictorial techniques, construct generation techniques, and topological techniques. The paper concludes that methods based on the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance (Harter & Pike, 1984) and personal construct psychology offer the most appropriate means for assessing the self-concept of children with Down syndrome.

This paper presents an analysis of the first 81 cases seen in the recently established assessment service for children with autism and related disorders in Southampton. The children presenting for assessment are described in terms of a number of biographical, educational, behavioural, and medical features and the characteristics of our sample are compared with published findings. The future development of the service is considered in the light of current developments and common features and concerns of the families seen.

Health departments in the new South Africa are undergoing major restructuring and, in some cases, severe financial cutbacks as new policies attempt to redress the inequities of the past. A district system is being phased in, with a shift in funding from academic hospitals to secondary and primary level care. The process is being undermined by the current recession, which also affects Welfare and Education facilities, and by widespread poverty, violence, and other adverse conditions. Child mental health services are discussed in the light of current human resources, epidemiological data, the effects of violence and cultural issues, together with some reflections on their future.

In September 1997 the President's Interdisciplinary Committee organised a conference to look at issues around Care Planning. As important as the content of the conference was the aim of fostering mutual understanding and the cross-fertilisation of ideas across disciplines. Papers were given by judges, social services directors, guardians, Department of Health representatives, researchers, and child and adolescent mental health specialists. Interdisciplinary workshop discussions followed each paper generating group views and papers. All the papers have just been published as a book (Clarke, 1998).

Dominating themes were the question of what, if any, influence the judge can exert over the Care Plan, the possibility of refusing to make a Care Order because of an unsatisfactory Care Plan, the value of the Care Plan and the accuracy of its details as a way of furthering and protecting a child's needs, the uncertainty about the proportion of cases where the Care Plan is altered or abandoned for good or bad reasons or major drift occurs, and ways of improving the quality of Care Plans through interdisciplinary co-operation. Various ways of dealing with these issues were suggested.