Recent adverse changes to the interpretation of aspects of the Children Act 1989 have deleteriously combined with amendments to limit accessibility to the legal aid budget. A closer enquiry highlights that contradictions within government policy and the law have significant implications for struggling families, with adequate assessment and treatment being consistently withdrawn. As children's needs are left increasingly unanswered, the evident cycle of neglect and deprivation of children is obviated by the clinical situation within the Cassel hospital, the only remaining National Health Service (NHS) in-patient resource for whole families.

Religious beliefs and practices of patients have long been thought to have a pathological basis and psychiatrists for over a century have understood them in this light. Recent research, however, has uncovered findings which suggest that to some patients religion may also be a resource that helps them to cope with the stress of their illness or with dismal life circumstances. What are psychiatrists doing with this new information? How is it affecting their clinical practices? Studies of psychiatrists in the UK, Canada and the USA suggest that there remains widespread prejudice against religion and little integration of it into the assessment or care of patients. In this paper I discuss a range of interventions that psychiatrists should consider when treating patients, including taking a spiritual history, supporting healthy religious beliefs, challenging unhealthy beliefs, praying with patients (in highly selected cases) and consultation with, referral to, or joint therapy with trained clergy (Koenig, 2007). Religion is an important psychological and social factor that may serve either as a powerful resource for healing or be intricately intertwined with psychopathology.

A recent Royal College of Psychiatrists' statement concluded that current evidence on abortion and mental health is inconclusive. This contribution examines the background to the Royal College of Psychiatrists' statement and the issues it raises. It is concluded that the best route to resolving such issues is through further and better research.

The last decade has seen clinicians and policy makers develop psychiatric intensive care units and low secure units from the so-called ‘special care wards’ of the 1980s and 1990s. Psychiatric intensive care units are for short-term care, while low secure units are for care for up to about 2 years. Department of Health standards have been set for these units. A national survey has shown that there are two main patient groups in the low secure units: patients on forensic sections coming down from medium secure units and those on civil sections who are transferred from general psychiatric facilities. Recent clinical opinion has emphasised the important role both psychiatric intensive care units and low secure units play in providing a bridge between forensic and general mental health services.

The practice of medicine does not occur in a vacuum. We work within a culture and a society, and we owe it to the society that our services are of a standard that will ensure their use by patients and one in which carers will have confidence in our abilities to look after their loved ones. Society expects certain standards of care and skills from its clinicians and as in any contract we, in turn, expect things from society. However, as such a contract is not specifically written down but is instead a virtual and an implicit one, some factors become crucial in understanding the relationship between society and the psychiatrist. Here, I propose to highlight some of the components of such a contract and how we renew this in the 21st century.

Mental healthcare for ethnic minorities is a government policy priority. However, debate about how services should develop has been overshadowed by public criticism over high rates of admission and sectioning in some ethnic groups, the implication being that racism is rife in mental healthcare. These criticisms are headline-seeking, scientifically crude and unfair to mental health professionals. However, it is true that some minority communities are mistrustful of the services available. We need to overcome this mistrust with a positive message – and a promise of fair treatment.

Payment by results is likely to be applicable to mental health services, with the exception of specialist services, next year. Its introduction will completely change the way mental health services are funded. It has three main components: national tariffs for treatments, codings or currencies for treatments according to resource use, and diagnosis and activity-based funding. This article describes payment by results, how ‘currencies’ are being developed for mental health, and outlines some of the problems and advantages of introducing this new system.

Contemporary psychiatry in the UK is practised in an era where the deinstitutionalisation programme is virtually complete. The vast majority of the large mental hospitals (once called asylums) that dominated mental healthcare have closed to be replaced by a complex network of community services (including a ‘virtual asylum’ of residential and nursing home provision). Psychiatrists of past generations recall the excitement (and concern) associated with the concepts of ‘community psychiatry’ and ‘community care’: some, including me, were appointed to post as a consultant community psychiatrist. In the era of ubiquitous community care is the community psychiatrist an anachronism? Or does the recent call for in-patient psychiatry to be recognised as a specialism (Dratcu, 2006) imply its obvious corollary, the specialist community psychiatrist?

In his review, Harold Koenig challenges us to take our patients' religious beliefs more seriously. The questions he poses and the recommendations he makes are challenging, so what are we doing and what should we do?

Best Practice in Managing Risk is a recent Department of Health publication which provides a framework for mental health professionals working with service users to assess risk. It underpins risk assessment with principles of good practice for all mental health settings and provides a list of guides offering structure to risk management. We consider the potential issues that may influence successful implementation of this framework across services based on personal experience in the field of risk assessment.

New Ways of Working is about developing new, enhanced and changed roles for mental health staff, and redesigning systems and processes to support staff to deliver effective, person-centred care in a way that is personally, financially and organisationally sustainable. It is about developing capable teams attuned to the needs of their users, supported by good systems (particularly information systems) and adequate resources, embedded within a values-driven organisational culture with leadership and effective team working modelled at all levels. New Ways of Working is what it says – new ways of working – rather than a single service model or structure that has to be adopted. It recognises that services catering for the different types of needs of service users across their lifespan and differing demographics and geography will need different configurations to manage their task most effectively. However, the underlying principles relating to using the skills of the workforce in the most productive way are common. It is about achieving cultural change; a shift in the way teams think about themselves, the skills of the individuals within them, and the reasons they are there. However, cultural change is difficult to achieve and it is difficult to measure the extent to which it has been achieved.

Psychiatry is the only specialty that uses legislation which is torn between utilitarian and rights-focused approaches. Although on the one hand this improves the opportunity for good outcome, on the other it reduces autonomous decision-making. Because psychiatry is the only medical speciality in this situation, this may cause stigmatisation and an inappropriate expectation on psychiatry to fulfil some kind of social policing role.