Open Dialogue training programmes have been essential to the success of the development of the Open Dialogue service in Western Lapland. Over the last 20 years, as interest in the approach has developed internationally, there has been a need for a variety of training programmes, and given the variety of programmes now established internationally, it can be unclear how these trainings differ from and relate to one another. On this page you will find the following information:

• Some basic details about different levels of Open Dialogue training programme, and how they interrelate to one another. See here.
• The work of Open Dialogue UK and how our programmes compare to those run by other organisations, including some key differences.
• Details of upcoming programmes that are planned/scheduled and open to applications.
• The development of Open Dialogue training in Western Lapland. See here.

Whilst some aspects of our work/training programmes are similar to those offered by other organisations, some are different from some of these organisations. Below you will find some of the aspects of Open Dialogue training that are important to us:

• Size of training group: Open Dialogue training programmes in Western Lapland/Finland have always been organised with relatively small groups of people, in order to ensure that everyone can be active in the dialogue, and the relational aspects of the work being done/discussed can be explored. Participants on training programmes always sit in circles, whether the focus is theoretical, practical or personal experience/development. We think that working in relatively small groups, with participants sat in circles (or all visible on the same screen if the training is run online) are essential components of any Open Dialogue training and set a limit of 18 people for our trainers training programme, and 18 or 27 people for foundation level training programmes. Our seminars are for similarly sized groups. We think that training programmes organised for larger groups and those run partly in lecture halls or in a theatre style are not in keeping with the Open Dialogue approach.
• We can travel to you!: Most of the training programmes that we have run over the last 12 years have involved us travelling nationally in the UK or internationally, and all of the trainers we work with are able to travel to participate in programmes. We organise all of the administration relating to this (trainer travel/accommodation, etc.).
• Flexibility of training schedule: Our foundation training programme can be organised in blocks of 2, 3, 4 or 5 days, based on the needs of your service, and we are always willing to consider adaptations to the schedule.
• Flexible payment schedules: Whether you are an NHS trust, another organisation, or an individual, we are able to arrange payment schedules to meet your needs.
• Only using experienced/qualified trainers: We have always sought to work with the most experienced and qualified Open Dialogue trainers that we can find, and have consistently had positive feedback from both participants and mental health organisations about the quality of the training team we have used on our training programmes – you can read some of this feedback here and learn more about our team here. As well as including senior trainers from the Western Lapland service, we have invited a select group of experienced international trainers from other countries and, having now run as many as 40 training programmes of one year length or more, this team of trainers have become skilled at working together, and have invested a good deal of time beyond the training programmes in refining the content and quality of training materials. Given that Open Dialogue UK has trained a large proportion of the international Open Dialogue trainers, and wants to uphold the quality of the training structures that we have adopted, we are keen to ensure that Open Dialogue training programmes are led by qualified Open Dialogue trainers.
• Staying close to the Open Dialogue model and training from Western Lapland: We adopted the three year and trainers training programmes from Western Lapland, as we considered these programmes to be of excellent quality, and saw no reason to do otherwise. We thought that the qualities that we hoped our training participants would develop through the training would be best realised by following these Finnish training programmes that had already been established. Some other organisations have chosen to merge dialogical principles with other practices or with other theoretical/political content, which whilst potentially valuable in their own right, in our view risk creating an agenda which can both dilute and distort the power of a truly dialogic process. In staying close to the Finnish model on these training programmes, we are not seeking to be ‘purist’, and recognise that any programme can evolve in helpful ways. We have therefore been happy to see certain aspects of our training programmes develop, based on collaboration and experience.
• Maintaining link with Western Lapland: We always look to include trainers from the Western Lapland service in our training programmes, wherever possible, both because we think it’s very valuable for participants to learn directly from people who work or have worked day-to-day in the service there, and because we value the ongoing relationship with members of the Western Lapland team. We do not want to ‘appropriate’ the Open Dialogue approach, but rather develop long-term relationships with Open Dialogue practitioners and trainers from Western Lapland and elsewhere, in which aspects of training programmes can develop through collaboration, whilst staying true to the values and practices in Western Lapland.
• Not using a modular approach to training: We think that it is important to not take a modular approach to Open Dialogue training, so each of our training programmes is run with the same participants from start to finish. This continuity enhances safety on training programmes and gives us more opportunity to work with the relational aspects of the training.
• Running training programmes with interpreters and high quality equipment: We have a lot of experience of succesfully organising seminars and training programmes with interpreters, both in-person and online, and have high quality equipment to support this process (Sennheiser headphones, wireless transmitters and receivers, etc.), which is transportable if the training is being organised in your service.
• Running training programmes online: During the pandemic we were forced to move our training programmes online in order to be able to complete them, and as we settled in to this new format, we realised that a lot more was possible online than was previously imagined, which encouraged us to keep offering an online foundation training annually since 2021. We have only had to make slight adaptations to the programme when running it online, and on occasion we have got feedback that the online training is actually advantageous in some respects.

In the early phases of the development of the Open Dialogue approach in Western Lapland a culture of learning together developed in the service. National and international practitioners, researchers and theorists were invited to Lapland to lead workshops and seminars that all staff were welcome to attend. A good deal of inspiration came from the tradition of systemic family therapy, and in particular the more collaborative/dialogical forms that it started to take internationally in the 1980s. The need to establish a training programme for all staff that supported the development of their practice with families/social networks was considered essential, and the resulting three year training programme was first established in the Western Lapland service in 1989, and was eventually accredited as a family therapy training programme in Finland. This training has now been run in the Western Lapland service on eight occasions.