Interest in developing the Open Dialogue approach within the NHS goes back more than 15 years. Jaakko Seikkula, one of the founders of the Open Dialogue approach, had visited the UK on a number of occasions, including giving a keynote speech at the Soteria Network conference in Derby in 2011. This helped to raise greater awareness of the approach in the UK. Open Dialogue UK was formed one year later, with the specific intention of promoting the development of the Open Dialogue approach within the NHS. We organised many seminars across the UK between 2013 and 2017 and a conference in 2016, inviting Jaakko Seikkula, Markku Sutela and others from the team in Western Lapland to participate. 35 NHS trusts were represented at one or more of these events, and as a result several trusts sent teams to participate in Open Dialogue training programmes in the subsequent years, and research projects started to be developed in the UK (for more on the work of Open Dialogue UK within the NHS please see the section below).

Early research in the UK focused on the feasibility of developing Open Dialogue within the NHS. One of the themes that emerged from this research was the challenge of developing the approach in a system that is more fragmented than the service in Western Lapland, with many more specialised teams, and therefore less continuity of care (one of the seven principles of Open Dialogue). As a result, some trusts have worked on creating new pathways of care, in line with the transformation project with the NHS.

Open Dialogue is in certain respects in tune with NHS guidelines. For instance, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidelines for Early Intervention for Psychosis services recommend that they should work in partnership with service users and their carers and “take time to build supportive and empathic relationships as an essential part of care” (NICE, 2014, p. 11). Baker & Calzavara (2021), found that “both service users and family members attending network meetings were significantly more likely to state that they felt involved in the planning of treatment and care and able to question the treatment options offered. Carers were more likely to report that they were given time to discuss their own needs.” (p. 144).

Having run Open Dialogue seminars for a couple of years, including in-house within the NHS, the focus of our work at Open Dialogue UK was on organising an Open Dialogue training programme based on the three year ‘core’ training in Western Lapland. Five NHS trusts sent teams to participate in this training, which is described in greater detail on this page. It later became clear that, in addition to this programme, there was a need for a shorter, one year, foundation training programme and we started to organise running such a programme anually, from 2016 onwards. We were pleased to receive applications from several trusts, and have continued to offer this training annually (our 2027 foundation training will be run online and further details can be found here). In total more than 15 trusts have been represented on these programmes.

Before long it became clear that the preferred format for most NHS trusts was to organise in-house training programmes, meaning that teams of trainers would need to be able to travel across the UK in order to deliver training. At Open Dialogue UK we put together a team of trainers who could do so and, by organising training programmes in this way, significantly reduced the cost per person for such programmes. Over the last 8 years we have successfully organised in-house foundation training programmes in the following trusts/organisations, which has enabled them to start to develop the Open Dialogue approach:

• South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
• Leicestershire Partnership NHS trust
• Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
• Cardiff and Vale University Health Board
• South London & Maudsley NHS trust
• Aspire, Leeds
• RDaSH NHS Foundation Trust
• Lincolnshire CCG

Within these trusts/organisations, we have worked with a variety of teams, including Early Intervention for Psychosis, Crisis & Home Treatment, Community Mental Health, Pause, Inpatient, Older Adults, Maternal Mental Health and Primary Care. One of the strengths of the Open Dialogue approach is how versatile it is. The model is applicable across all mental health teams/services, and to professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds, including nurses, peer workers, psychologists, care coordinators, psychiatrists and social workers.

If you are interested in learning more about our work in the NHS, please contact us for further information, and if you are interested in us organising introductory seminars or training programmes within your trust/team, please complete the form on this page.