Purpose – There is little published literature about the number of home visits provided to patients within forensic intellectual disability units, and there is no published data on variables that affect home visits. There is a need for a baseline audit that can formulate standards for future practice. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – This paper describes the home visit programme within a forensic intellectual disability service, and a baseline audit of the programme. The audit measured the number of home visits, any factors that adversely affect home visits, and the extent of family contact. The authors propose audit standards for evaluation of good practice in this area. Findings – The audit involved 63 patients over a one-year period. In total, 81 per cent of patients had some form of family contact and 54 per cent of patients at least one home visit. However, 19 per cent of patients had no contact with their family due to a variety of reasons. There were no significant differences in the number of home visits between men and women, patients on civil vs criminal sections or those treated “within area” or “out of area”. Patients in rehabilitation wards had significantly more visits than those in low or medium secure. Originality/value – Conventional wisdom is that reduced family contact is the direct result of patients being placed “out of area”. The results of this audit suggest that, at least in this group, the reasons may be much more nuanced and that the current definition of “out of area” has to be improved to incorporate the actual distance between the patient’s current family home and the service. Audit standards have been proposed to monitor family contact and home visits. Future work should focus on the relationship between family contact and treatment outcomes

PurposeThis paper aims to describe how a patient centred recovery approach was implemented in a secure learning disabilities service.Design/methodology/approachThere are no specific tools for measuring recovery in a secure learning disabilities service. The Recovery Star; a measure of individual recovery was adopted for use among the patients. Staff underwent training on the use of the Recovery Star tool after which a multidisciplinary steering group made some modifications to the tool. Training was cascaded to staff throughout the service and use of the Recovery Star tool was embedded in the care programme approach process.FindingsIt was found that implementing a recovery approach with the Recovery Star tool was a beneficial process for the service but that services will require a whole systems approach to implementing recovery. Key workers working with patients thought that the structure of the Recovery Star tool opened up avenues for discussing topics covered in the domains of the Recovery Star tool which may otherwise have not been discussed as fully.Practical implicationsThe availability of a tool, integrated into existing service processes, e.g. care programme approach and accompanied by a systems approach, equips patients and staff for articulating and measuring the recovery journey.Originality/valueThe paper shows that the Recovery Star tool, embedded in a care programme approach process, equips patients and staff for measuring the recovery journey.