Open Dialogue national conference has been postponed (to 2027)
The Open Dialogue Centre team have made the decision to postpone the Open Dialogue National conference scheduled for July 2026 until 2027 – date to be confirmed.
Instead we are planning an events program (to be announced soon) in response to the urgent need for services to shift from crises driven care to community-centred practice. These events will bring the same people together, in different settings – in-person and virtually – to ensure we can focus on what we need to put in place right now.
The opportunity right now:
Services across Australia want to shift from crisis-driven care to community-centered practice—but they can’t do it alone. The Open Dialogue Centre makes this transformation possible and sustainable. We enable services to embed, adapt, and scale evidence-based community practice in different contexts.
This approach requires short term philanthropic investment to catalyse the change with Open Dialogue. Services can then own and sustain their practice change, so it becomes business as usual—proving that community-centred care works financially and culturally for people, families and the workforce.
ODC’s new strategy for a system that works:
Our new strategy outlines the opportunity to focus on the four areas of investment needed, so that when we facilitate our next conference in 2027, we can be describing shared implementation learnings with a strong community of practice and the evidence base for Open Dialogue in an Australian context.
Our events program will unlock:
1. Co-design and adaptation of Open Dialogue practice models in services. 2. Developing mental health and wellbeing workforce in skills and care provision that is relational and networked.
3. Research and evaluation to demonstrate the change works to government and policy leaders.
4. A place-based backbone function that facilitates local coordination and networking across the services system to align with the Open Dialogue Approach.
We will also raise awareness about the role of ODC: working with services, partners and supporters to back in-depth and widespread change for good.
More information about the three reasons we want to re-schedule the Open Dialogue National conference:
1. So we can leverage the ODDESSI findings quickly in 2026 with a sequence of online and in-person events.
While the publication date for the ODDESSI findings has not yet been confirmed, media and policy interest in the Randomised Control Trial process is high, and we are being approached to support our friends in the UK and in several states and territories in Australia to develop a suite of materials and events that will support our collective advocacy and policy influence.
2. Interest in Goulburn Region Open Dialogue Connect (GRODC) and whole of community
This requires ODC’s small team to work closely with partners in other regions so they too can become investment ready, with ODC providing the tools and skills to showcase the potential for other community-led approaches through Open Dialogue.
3. We are planning a number of symposia and a program of events to support our new strategy for a system that works.
So while we see the passion, excitement, commitment, engagement around our conference this year, we hope you will join us to continue to build what we need for Open Dialogue to drive the practice change we need around Australia.
We are excited to invite you to re-imagine your conference ideas in a way that will engage partners, leaders and supporters in our next steps.
For those who have already registered for the conference, we will be in touch to organise reimbursement.
Thank you for your patience!
