Open Dialogue training programmes have been developing internationally for more than 20 years, following the success of the development of the Open Dialogue approach in Western Lapland. This website is intended to be a resource for people interested in the Open Dialogue approach and in particular in organising or participating in Open Dialogue training programmes, seminars and supervision. In time the hope is to be able to offer more services, such as consultancy for mental health services interested in developing the Open Dialogue approach, and more besides. For more information on the Open Dialogue approach, please see this page.

OPEN DIALOGUE TRAINING IN WESTERN LAPLAND - Going back to the roots

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 and the need to establish a training programme for all staff that supported the development of their practice with families/social networks was considered essential. The three year training programme, that was first established in the Western Lapland service in 1989, took inspiration from systemic family therapy training programmes, and was accredited as a family therapy training programme in Finland.