In the first part of the Forum on Play, in Volume 3, Number 2, an overview of the functions of play was provided by David Pellegrini and Peter Smith, and the importance of play in the school playground was emphasised by Peter Blatchford.

In this, the second part of our forum, Anne Alvarez and Asha Phillips start us off with a masterly exposition of the importance of play in a clinical therapeutic relationship. They show how analytic thinking about play has developed, and add in a wider understanding from developmental psychology. They give vivid examples of what can happen during therapeutic sessions, and propose that if a secure relationship can be established, the child will then be safe to explore alternative ways of feeling and being, free of fear.

Allison James then brings us an anthropological perspective on play. With examples, she develops the argument that children's play is not merely a re-enactment of adult values and rules. Rather, successful play with other children is a finely tuned ‘act’ that requires sensitive attunement in order to follow the niceties of the rules and meanings that govern situations. These are complex and differ according to the context the child is in, but are specific to the child's own world and not merely generated by adults.

Finally, Peter Slade offers us a uniquely personal view of how he has used play in drama therapy with children. Reading it enables us to glimpse ways of thinking spanning his 50 years of experience.

To give a practitioner's perspective, we invited Ann Cattanach to comment on the first two reviews in the forum and Margaret Hunter to comment on the three reviews in this issue. However, if any of these reviews or commentaries sparks off opinions, reminiscences, or experiences, please write to the Editors, so they can be shared with the readership.

The authors examine the historical framework within which child psychotherapists have used play. They discuss developments in theory and technique influenced by advances in psychoanalytic thinking, child development studies, and clinical work with severely deprived and disturbed patients.

This paper offers a critical assessment and some illustrations of an anthropological approach to the study of children's play. It argues that universal definitions of play are problematic and that therefore attention should be paid to the local definitions of play operative in any culture. This includes, importantly, the meanings that children attribute to and generate through their play. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork the paper illustrates just one aspect of children's play: the different ways in which play facilitates power relations to be articulated, upheld, and challenged. In this sense play is revealed to be far from a frivolous activity. Instead, it is a serious medium through which children conduct their social affairs.

There is a growing concern about behaviour, violence, and moral attitudes. The following is an outline of the link between home and school and what might be done to encourage early-learning conditions; also there are warnings about how delinquency might start. There is the author's original description of the two main forms of play and of how to establish more constructive attitudes through Social Drama, particularly in Senior Schools. In dealing with delinquents, there is explanation of emotional ‘Experience without Sin’. Conclusions are based on nearly 70 years of careful observation of thousands of children.

Pellegrini and Smith (1998) have provided a challenging review of the forms and possible functions of play during childhood, and Blatchford's (1998) paper on children's play reports a programme of research about the nature of play at school breaktimes that seems to be the sort of research that Pellegrini and Smith recommend in their conclusion, calling for more descriptive studies of children's play. When considering the nature and possible functioning of play during childhood Pellegrini and Smith explore general definitional issues. They suggest that play theorists such as Piaget and Vygotsky considered that play was the way that children learnt skills necessary for successful functioning in adulthood. Perhaps this is a simple way to express, for example, Vygotsky's (1978) descriptions of play in ‘The Role of Play in Development’ in Mind in society. Vygotsky states that in play a child creates an imaginary situation; that play is the place where a child spontaneously makes use of his ability to separate meaning from an object without knowing he is doing it. The creation of an imaginary situation is the first manifestation of the child's emancipation from situational constraints and the primary paradox of play is that the child operates with an alienated meaning in a real situation. Vygotsky may be describing an important skill for successful functioning in adulthood, but it is also an important function in childhood.

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.

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 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.

This conference was held in Central London in January 1998 and organised jointly by The British Juvenile and Family Courts Society (BJFCS) and The National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, at which the keynote speaker was The Rt. Hon. Jack Straw MP, the Home Secretary. Important contributions were also made by no fewer than nine members of the Government's Task Force set up in May last year to examine the future of the Youth Courts — a task which, in my opinion as a Youth Court magistrate since 1978 and past chairman of the BJFCS, was ripe for attention. The conference was attended by 300 delegates representing a wide range of professionals involved with young people and the courts.

The Home Secretary's opening words emphasised both the timeliness, in view of the Crime and Disorder Bill going through Parliament, and the importance of the conference because of the widely held view that the system was failing. In addition a consultation process was taking place to look at longer-term reform of the Youth Court. The Home Secretary spelled out that too little is done when children start to offend to ‘intervene positively’ in their lives; repeat cautions are used ineffectively; re-offending continues on bail; and there is a lack of supervised community-based programmes aimed at making young people take responsibility for their behaviour, make amends, and change. He drew attention to the disjointed system of both custodial facilities and orders that need to be overhauled. Finally he pointed out that there is a lack of a national strategy.