The past 20 years have seen a movement of psychiatric care away from large, isolated institutions and into community orientated services. This change has been facilitated by modern therapeutics; and also by new attitudes to care and rehabilitation of patients, which to operate optimally require contributions to case management by members of a multidisciplinary team.

Interest in the training of psychiatrists is not a new development in Great Britain (Lewis, 1964). Child psychiatry training has a more recent history (Warren, 1974). The RMPA in 1967 approved documents outlining principles and requirements for the training of child psychiatrists. The most recent guidelines were issued by the Joint Committee for Higher Psychiatric Training (JCHPT) in 1975. They advanced the principle that a variety of experience was a requirement of any training programme, and they detailed the types of clinical experience, supervision facilities and formal teaching occasions that should be available.