Dear Nick,

It’s been a while since our last newsletter and so we are getting in touch to update you on our plans for the coming year. We are once again able to offer our foundation training programme both online and in London next year. Kari Valtanen and Anni Haase, who both work in the mental health service in Western Lapland where Open Dialogue originated, will be joining me as trainers on the online training and Petra Hohn, Kari Valtanen and Darren Baker will be the trainers for the London training. We have now run this training programme more than 25 times over the last 8 years, in the UK and internationally, which has given us plenty of opportunity to develop/refine it, based on our experiences and feedback from participants. Given that Open Dialogue is at heart a system change, it has been important to offer a training that is accessible to as many mental health professionals as possible, including people who have not had therapeutic training in their professional background, and so this has been one guiding idea in the development and design of the programme. As well as running the training programme in London and online, we have also been running it in-house in four different NHS trusts this year, and I am pleased to say that further in-house NHS training programmes are planned for next year, as well as programmes in Belgium. Further details of our London and online training programmes can be found below and online here and here, and the deadline for applications is 31 October 2024.

We also have plans to run another Open Dialogue trainers training programme in London, starting in Autumn 2025. I am pleased to let you know that in recent months the training faculty for this programme has been working to revise the criteria for eligibility for participation, meaning that a wider variety of mental health professionals can now access the trainers training, as long as they have completed an Open Dialogue foundation training programme and they have sufficient experience of Open Dialogue practice and supervision, with equivalent experience to participants on the three year Open Dialogue practitioner training. On the Open Dialogue international website here, there is now a diagram which illustrates different pathways to the Open Dialogue trainers training programme. For next year’s trainers training I will once again be joined by very experienced Open Dialogue trainers from Finland, including Jaakko Seikkula, Jorma Ahonen, Eija-Liisa Rautiainen, Kari Valtanen, Mia Kurtti and Anni Haase. If you are interested in running Open Dialogue practitioner training programmes in your service/region, then this international  trainers training programme will enable you to do so. Further details of the programme can be found below and online here, and the deadline for applications is 31 December 2024.

Finally, below you can also find details of an upcoming online seminar to introduce the Open Dialogue approach on 25 November and details of the next online NHS implementation network meeting.

With best wishes,

Nick Putman
Open Dialogue UK

OPEN DIALOGUE TRAINERS TRAINING COMMENCING IN AUTUMN 2025

We are planning to run the two year international Open Dialogue trainers training programme for the third time in London, starting in Autumn 2025. This programme will follow the trainers' training that has been run three times by Dialogic in Helsinki, with an extra emphasis on the experience of being a trainer and on developing training programmes in mental health care settings. It will be run over a full two years, in eight 5 day blocks (40 days of in-person training in total), including blocks focused on theory, practice/supervision and the ‘exploring your relational world’ process. We are pleased to be able to welcome back the same core training team that worked together on the last trainers training - Jorma Ahonen, Eija-Liisa Rautiainen, Jaakko Seikkula, Anni Haase, Mia Kurtti, Kari Valtanen and Nick Putman. For further details of the training programme, and to apply, please see this page on the Open Dialogue international website.

OPEN DIALOGUE FOUNDATION TRAINING PROGRAMMES IN 2025

We will be running two foundation training programmes in 2025, one online, starting in January, and the other in person in London, starting in February. This 20 day programme is the most widely used Open Dialogue training programme internationally. We ourselves have run it in on 25 occasions, in 5 different countries, and variations of it have also been used widely across Germany, as well as in Switzerland and in the USA as part of the Parachute Project.

Our foundation training programme provides a thorough grounding in the practice of facilitating Open Dialogue network meetings, and participants are encouraged to start practicing before the end of the training, if they are able to (though such practice is not a required part of Open Dialogue training at foundation level). The emphasis in the training is on practice, and understanding the approach through engaging both personally and professionally in the process. In line with similar training programmes run in Finland, we limit these foundation training programmes to 18 people, with two trainers present each day.

We welcome all mental health care professionals (including peer workers) onto our foundation training programme, as well as independent practitioners and family members. We have an experienced training team for both of these programmes, and further details can be found below.

LONDON 2025 - This programme runs from February to December 2025 in 7 blocks of training (one two day block followed by six three day blocks), and the trainers will be Nick Putman (UK), Kari Valtanen (Lapland, Finland), Petra Hohn (Sweden) and Darren Baker (UK). For further details of the programme, including content, dates, fees and trainers, please see this page on our website. The deadline for applications is 31 October 2024.

ONLINE 2025 - This programme runs from January to December 2025 in 9 blocks of training (seven 2 day blocks and two 3 day blocks), and the trainers will be Anni Haase (Lapland, Finland), Kari Valtanen (Lapland, Finland) and Nick Putman (UK). For further details of the programme, including content, dates, fees and trainers, please see this page on our website. The deadline for applications is 31 October 2024.

ONE DAY ONLINE SEMINAR - AN INTRODUCTION TO THE OPEN DIALOGUE APPROACH

London - 25 November 2024: In this one day online seminar Nick Putman will introduce the Open Dialogue approach using presentations and dialogues. Participants can expect to gain a fuller understanding of the approach, the philosophy that underpins it, and how it relates to, and can inform their current working practices. We have a range of price points for this seminar, in the hope that everyone who wishes to attend can do so. For further details of the seminar, please see this page on our website.

UK OPEN DIALOGUE IMPLEMENTATION NETWORK

The next UK Open Dialogue Implementation Network online meeting will take place on Tuesday 10 December from 3-5pm on Zoom. This meeting is open to anyone in the UK who is interested in developing the Open Dialogue approach. If you are interested in joining one of these meetings please email Darren Baker by clicking here.

You have been subscribed to this newsletter because you signed up to it via our website or you registered for one of our events and you opted in to the newsletter.