The Families Unit at the Cassel Hospital is the only medical establishment with in-patient beds for whole families, and it can provide the opportunity for detailed and relatively safe observation and treatment of severely disordered families. A number of different kinds of family are treated, including those in which a mother has suffered a severe post puerperal breakdown, those in which one or more members of the family have a severe psychiatric condition such as chronic depression, as well as families whose whole functioning in many aspects of life has broken down.

There is a trend for new consultant posts in child psychiatry to be linked to Social Services Departments. I recently took up such a post, with four of my sessions funded by the local Social Services Department. Training of child psychiatrists for such consultative posts is variable, but I was fortunate to have trained as a senior registrar at the Tavistock Clinic, where one of the training options was a link with Camden Social Services through a placement at Camden Assessment Centre.

An enquiry concerning the difficulties faced by doctors with domestic responsibilities was undertaken as a response to a letter by a part-time senior registrar who was facing problems in her training.

The project described in this paper developed from a DHSS funded scheme which was part of the Government's ‘Helping the Community to Care’ initiative. This was aimed at meeting a deficiency in the community — the lack of a coordinated system of after care for people suffering from long-term mental illness. The Mental Health Division of the DHSS described it thus.

The need for such a group as SPRIG was mentioned, although not by name, by Dingwall in his article on psychiatric rehabilitation. SPRIG became operational in 1986 with its inaugural, bi-annual meeting held at Dykebarr Hospital, and consists of personnel working within rehabilitation multidisciplinary teams. Membership is corporate or individual and there are now ten hospitals nationally who have felt sufficiently committed to rehabilitation to invest £50 in acquiring corporate membership.