How can different agencies charged with treating either those with mental illness or sexual offenders coordinate their efforts when a client needs both kinds of care? This collection of articles explains theories and practices pertaining to simultaneous treatment at the community and inpatient levels in the UK. Contributors consider convicted sex offenders and those who have behaved in inappropriate ways without a conviction, and work from developmental, psychological and social perspectives. They describe the relationship between mental disorder and sexual offending, risk assessment, the role of culture and ethnicity, the effects of the law, setting a sex offender service within a mental health setting, clinical assessment and formulation, treatment, the impact of personality disorder, multi-agency or multidisciplinary approaches, non-abusing parents and risk management, systemic interventions with sexual offending, and the effects of professionals working with sex offenders.

Julia Houston is a Consultant Clinical and Forensic Psychologist at the Forensic Mental Health Services, Shaftesbury Clinic in London, UK, and Team Leader of the Sex Offender Service. She has published previously in this area and is the author of Making Sense with Offenders: Personal Constructs, Therapy and Change (Wiley, 1998). Sarah Galloway is a Forensic Community Psychiatric Nurse and Lead Nurse with the Sex Offender Service, Forensic Mental Health Services, Shaftesbury Clinic, London, UK. She led the development and implementation of a psycho-educative group for partners of sex offenders. She is also attached to Kingston University as an Honorary Lecturer.