On 25 September 2026, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH) and CHARM organised a meeting at The Curve in Prestwich with psychiatrist and Open Dialogue lead Dr Russell Razzaque.
The event brought together around 60 people, including senior managers, frontline practitioners, peer workers, people with lived experience and members of CHARM. It reflected the growing interest within GMMH in how Open Dialogue could contribute to the future of mental health support across Greater Manchester.
Russell introduced the principles of Peer-Supported Open Dialogue and shared learning from the ODDESSI research programme and the development of Open Dialogue within the NHS.
Open Dialogue works with the person experiencing distress alongside the family members, friends and other people who are important to them. Network meetings provide a space in which different experiences can be heard and explored without professionals rushing to impose a diagnosis or predetermined solution.
The approach emphasises:
– responding quickly when a crisis develops;
– involving the person’s family and social network;
– maintaining continuity with the same workers;
– making decisions transparently and with the person present;
– including peer workers as equal members of the team;
– tolerating uncertainty rather than reaching premature conclusions; and
– developing a shared understanding through dialogue.
Russell emphasised that Open Dialogue is not simply a new therapeutic technique. It requires a different relationship between services, the person experiencing distress and their wider network. Professionals must be prepared to listen, reflect openly and share power. Implementing the approach therefore requires sustained training, supervision, leadership support and organisational change.
The meeting also considered the emerging evidence from ODDESSI and the practical lessons from NHS services already introducing Peer-Supported Open Dialogue. The discussion recognised the importance of maintaining the integrity of the model. Open Dialogue should not be reduced to a short course in communication skills or introduced without the conditions needed to support it.
CHARM described its own work to promote Open Dialogue and other compassionate, rights-based alternatives. This has included members undertaking Open Dialogue learning and CHARM hosting a three-day visit to Manchester in March 2025 from an experienced Dutch Peer-Supported Open Dialogue team. Dirk Corstens, Martijn Kole, Noor van Overbeek and Sanna Martha brought professional and lived-experience perspectives, with places also made available to mental health workers from across Greater Manchester.
CHARM has also developed relationships with Russell Razzaque, Sashi Sashidharan, Roberto Mezzina and others working to create more relational, community-based and non-coercive forms of support.
For CHARM, Open Dialogue connects closely with the campaign for locally based, 24-hour mental health support. A neighbourhood service should offer an open door, rapid help, continuity and practical support without requiring people to reach crisis point before receiving assistance. Open Dialogue could provide an important way of working within such a service by ensuring that families and social networks are involved and that decisions are made collaboratively.
The meeting raised several practical questions about how Open Dialogue might be developed within GMMH. These included the training of an initial group of practitioners, the involvement of families and friends, the role of peer workers and the possibility of partnering with an NHS Trust that already has experience of implementation.
There was also interest in whether support available through the Royal College of Psychiatrists could help GMMH establish an initial training programme. Any phased introduction would need advice from Russell and others with implementation experience to ensure fidelity to the model.
No final implementation decisions were made at the meeting. However, it created an important opportunity for GMMH staff, senior leaders and community partners to consider Open Dialogue seriously and to identify possible next steps. These could include:
– establishing a properly supported training cohort;
– working with an experienced Open Dialogue service;
– involving service users, families, peer workers and community organisations from the beginning;
– exploring its use within the proposed South and Central Manchester neighbourhood mental health hub; and
– agreeing how implementation and outcomes would be evaluated.
The meeting demonstrated substantial interest among GMMH staff and provided a foundation for further conversations between GMMH, CHARM, Russell Razzaque and other experienced Open Dialogue practitioners.
For CHARM, the central question is not simply whether GMMH adopts the language of Open Dialogue. It is whether the Trust is prepared to develop services that genuinely listen, share power, involve people’s networks and respond to distress in a compassionate, transparent and rights-based way.
