The COHSE Special Working Party Report was a response to guidance issued by the Department of Health and Social Security in HC(76)11 entitled The Management of Violent or Potentially Violent Hospital Patients, which the Confederation considered inadequate. The DHSS Circular had been prepared after protracted discussions with the Royal College of Nursing (Rcn) and the Royal College of Psychiatrists. The COHSE Report extends beyond the issue of the management of violence, and we did not consider all the points put forward in the document (see page 124, para. 2 and page 125, para. 5 below).

This document, produced by the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Section of the College, is aimed at administrators, trainees considering entering the specialty, and colleagues in other disciplines. Its purpose is to describe the role of child and adolescent psychiatrists today, who work largely as part of a multidisciplinary team and may be based in a hospital or in the community. There is increasing emphasis on community work: assessment, treatment and preventive work is carried out with children and their families in close liaison with mainly non-medical colleagues. Such multidisciplinary teamwork has many advantages, but presents delicate problems in ethics and organization. In what follows ‘child psychiatrist’ will be generally used to mean ‘child and adolescent psychiatrist’.

In March 1974 the DES and DHSS published a Joint Circular giving advice to local authorities on the provision and organization of Child Guidance (1). It recommended the establishment of interdisciplinary working parties whose brief would be to report to their Joint Consultative Committees (the function of which was defined by the DHSS in 1974) and hence, by December 1976, to the Ministries.