About APOD

APOD is the professional body for Peer-supported Open Dialogue. We register professionals who are qualified to practice POD, as well as organise trainings for practitioners in the field and help to promote Peer-supported Open Dialogue more widely across mental health services.

POD is a collaborative, social model of care where all provision is organised around “network meetings” that bring together the service user, family, friends, clinicians and anyone else who can help and support. The meetings are set up in a more democratic and less hierarchical manner than is traditionally found in mental health services, and the primary focus is on helping those most affected find their own way of making sense of the experience, and thus feel more able to make decisions for themselves. Peer workers are also a key part of the model, especially where a service user might lack their own social network. Peer workers sit in every team and help foster the same more democratic, less hierarchical approach within the culture of the service.

As well as training clinicians and peers in POD, and maintaining a register of those who can practice this way, APOD is also actively involved in promoting this as a model for mental healthcare across the NHS and internationally. We therefore deliver workshops, lectures and tasters to organisations anywhere, and help recruit people to the one year postgraduate diploma in Peer-supported Open Dialogue that is the basic training for practitioners in the field.

APOD is a not for profit organisation, so all funds raised go towards the establishment and promotion of Peer-supported Open Dialogue in the NHS, and internationally.