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This study aims to explore how care staff working with people with learning disabilities experienced psychologist-facilitated team formulation sessions in a cognitive analytic style (contextual reformulation).

Eleven participants attended at least one contextual reformulation session regarding a client their team referred because of challenging behaviour. Post-intervention semi-structured interviews were analysed using qualitative inductive thematic analysis.

Five themes were developed: multiple roles and functions of sessions and clinicians; challenging behaviour in relationship; making links – understanding can be enlightening, containing and practical; the process of developing a shared understanding and approach; and caught between two perspectives. Findings suggested contextual reformulation helped staff see challenging behaviour as relational, provided them with the space to reflect on their emotions and relate compassionately to themselves and others, and ultimately helped them to focus their interventions on understanding and relationally managing rather than acting to reduce behaviour.

Qualitative methodology allows no causal inferences to be made. Ten of 11 participants were female.

This qualitative study adds to the limited research base on team formulation in learning disabilities settings and specifically that using a cognitive analytic approach.

There is little research addressing the delivery of training for health professionals who are interested in using cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) techniques as an adjunct to their current role. This paper describes the establishment and evaluation of a CBT training course to develop CBT skills in staff working with people with intellectual disabilities in Trust healthcare settings. The course would enable staff to learn how they could incorporate these skills into their daily practice to help them understand and work more effectively with people with intellectual disabilities.

A CBT training course was designed to teach staff the use of a number of basic and specific CBT techniques and principles that staff could use within their current roles. Specific issues in relation to people with intellectual disabilities were included, e.g. understanding cognitive deficits as well as cognitive distortions. The course ran for six sessions on a fortnightly basis, followed by a two-month follow-up session. Participants completed a pre- and post-assessment questionnaire and kept a reflective diary.

The training clearly focused on teaching skills that were feasible for staff to use in their own work settings. The evaluations, especially from the reflective diaries and the post-course questionnaires clearly demonstrated that this aim was achieved.

This was a pilot study as there has been no previously published evidence of using this approach within intellectual disabilities services. A further training course has been planned to continue evaluating the effectiveness of this approach.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the experiences of acquired brain injury (ABI) family caregivers who attended an acceptance based group intervention.

A qualitative design and interpretative phenomenological analysis methodology were used.

Five key themes were identified: increasing personal awareness; the dialectic of emotional acceptance vs emotional avoidance; integration of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) principles; peer support; and moving forward after the group. It seemed that some individuals found the ACT exercises distressing, whereas others reported benefits. All participants described experiences of acceptance vs avoidant means of coping, and attempts to integrate new approaches into existing belief systems.

This study is the first to explore the experiences of ABI caregivers undertaking an ACT group intervention.

Whether from a desire to be seen to be socially responsible, in pursuit of perceived profit opportunities, or as a reaction to increased professionalism on the part of charities, UK banks are paying increasing attention to the voluntary sector. Using secondary data, this paper investigates the market shares of banks amongst charities. It reveals that NatWest is the current market leader, but comparisons with a paper published a decade ago suggest that its market share and lead have diminished significantly. Further analysis reveals that one reason for that decline might be the recent growth in the share accounted for by the Co‐operative Bank, possibly as a consequence of the introduction of its ethical policy, some of the implications of which are discussed.

The aim of this paper is to identify the core issues that organisational leaders are facing internationally, as a result of a globalised and rapidly changing international economic environment. Appropriate leadership competencies and skills that enable organisational leaders to effectively deal with these core globalisation issues are examined in detail and are further explained through a conceptual model developed for the purpose of this study.

Conventional content analysis of extant literature in the leadership, management, organisational development and human resource management fields delimited this study to the identification of three core issues, their sub‐dimensions and associated organisational leadership effectiveness strategies.

This study presents a conceptual model consolidating current scholarly understanding of the international imperatives affecting twenty‐first century organisational leaders and describes “best practice” leadership skills, competencies and models that will enable managers to lead effectively in a rapidly changing, globalised market‐place.

The simplicity and explicitness of the descriptive‐based conceptual model represented in this review offers an original approach to the link between theory and practice in international organisational leadership, while acting to simplify the perplexing array of viewpoints on leadership approaches. A number of research alternatives are suggested that may lead to the formation of a more predictive “international imperative” model.

The purpose of this study was to develop a model of skilful surfing to aid understanding of how best to seek health information, online and offline, during pregnancy.

This study used an observational, descriptive design, using a purpose written questionnaire, factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

Analysis resulted in the factor loading of five components: online health information seeking behaviour, normalisation, offline support, trust and data saturation. These components were included as latent variables in an SEM to evaluate the credibility, and subsequently confirm the viability of the theory of skilful surfing.

To the authors' knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to successfully model and define what it is to skilfully surf health information online whilst pregnant, with empirical and theoretical underpinnings.