SummaryMental health services are increasingly supporting recovery-oriented practice as a basis for service delivery. There is considerable overlap between the values and approaches associated with recovery-based practice and those already endorsed as good psychiatric practice. However, these agreed principles may not be consistently applied and further steps may be needed if the reorientation of the relationship between psychiatrists and people using psychiatric services is to fully reflect recovery principles. This article describes ways in which psychiatric practice could develop, including conceptualising medication as one of many possible recovery tools that a person can actively use to support their well-being, and a range of practices available to professionals to support people in taking up an active stance in relation to medication. It also identifies recovery-supportive practices for when someone is unable to fully participate in decision-making, owing to crisis, loss of capacity or concerns about safety.

The NICE Guidelines for Schizophrenia are designed to give guidance on the best practice in treatment and management of schizophrenia. These guidelines have 13 standards which services can use for the purpose of audit. As schizophrenia is our service's most common diagnosis, an audit against the guidelines was undertaken. The results indicated that we met three of the standards. Recommendations have been implemented to improve practice on standards that were not met, and this has led to some creative practice development. Despite the labour‐intensive nature of the audit, the results gave a clear indication of areas where there was a need for improvement and will act as a good baseline for re‐audit.

The recent Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal case of Zhang Hong Li v DBS Bank (Hong Kong) Ltd upheld the effectiveness of anti-Bartlett clauses. This gives rise to the question of whether a trust-corporate structure, coupled with a well-drafted anti-Bartlett clause, leaves any room for trust obligations. Through the lens of the law on trust-owned companies, this article thus seeks to reconceptualise the ‘irreducible core of trust obligations’. It argues that the irreducible core means the minimum duties which are necessary to preserve the integrity of the trust concept. It draws a distinction between core and mandatory duties, in that the ‘bells and whistles’ one adds in specific contexts may be mandatory duties reflecting appropriate policies, instead of core duties necessary for a trust to exist. It accordingly considers the proper content of the irreducible core, as distinguished from other mandatory duties.

No abstract