ABSTRACT
A residential weekend for trainees provides the solution to several problems: how to introduce trainees to the value of group work; how to encourage interaction between trainees from different training programmes; how to facilitate self-awareness amongst trainees and how to improve the group leadership skills of course organisers. A small hotel is filled. This avoids the distraction of other guests and provides a number of different rooms in which to hold group sessions. Approximately 50 people can be accommodated, divided into five or six groups. Ten course organisers work in pairs and the regional adviser leads the leaders' group. Learning to work with a co-leader enhances individual group leadership skills and each session is followed by a debriefing within the leaders' group. Problems can be aired and strategies discussed. There has been an increasing feeling of identity amongst South West course organisers which has brought the various schemes closer together.
