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Developed and compiled by Angie Titchen & Kim Manley with:
Shaun Cardiff
Margaret Codd
Alex Fink
Donna Frost
Claire Hardwick
Karen Hammond
Michele Hardiman
Carrie Jackson
Famke v. Lieshout
Mary Mulcahey
Lorna Peelo-Kilroe
Karen Tuqiri
Renne Ward
Jonathan Webster
Critical Companionship
Facilitating career progression from person-centred practice to person-centred systems
Critical Companionship is a person-centred, non-hierarchical approach to learning and development, where facilitators and learners engage in mutual, experiential inquiry. Rooted in trust and high support / high challenge, it fosters co-learning and human flourishing.
Developed by Angie Titchen and Kim Manley, this approach has shaped leadership, education, and practice across health and social care. It featured in the Multi-Professional Consultant Practice (MPCP) programme, supporting aspiring consultant practitioners through co-inquiry and experiential learning.
This resource, shaped by an international team of practitioners, shares real experiences of becoming and being a critical companion—highlighting its power to transform learning relationships in professional practice.
What are the impacts of Critical Companionship?
The videos and resources in this guide show the impacts of critical companionship on individuals, teams, service users and those providing health and social care services, within practice, practice development, education and research contexts.
Demonstrating impact is defined by Belcher and Halliwell (2021 p2) as ‘any change caused in whole or in part by an action or set of actions, including research actions. The important role of collaboration and partnerships with stakeholders in co-creating and advancing the use of research-based knowledge and practice is at the heart of both the MPCP capabilities and critical companionship.
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Dedication & thanks
In gratitude, Angie would like to dedicate her part in this final work to those who helped her develop critical companionship in the early years and in a variety of ways:
Sue Pembrey, Alison Binnie, Mary Fitzgerald, Alison Kitson, Brendan McCormack, Jan Dewing, Donald MacIntyre, Joy Higgs, Debbie Horsfall, Steve Ersser, Judith Lathlean, Maeve McGinley, Emma Coats, Colin Coles, Bridget Somekh and John Elliott.
To those who supported, over many years, its continuing development in practice development, research and development contexts:
Kim Manley, Jonathon Webster, Tanya McCance, Jayne Wright, Maeve McGinley, Sally Hardy, Lucienne Hoogwerf, Karen Cox, Jo Odell, Carrie Jackson,
Annette Solman, Caroline Dickson, Debbie Baldie, Di Tasker and Erna Haroldsdottir.
And to those with whom I have walked alongside and have made videos for this programme:
Lorna Peelo-Kilroe, Mary Mulcahey, Famke van Lieshout, Clare Hardwick, Michele Hardiman, Karen Hammond, Donna Frost, Alex Fink, Margaret Codd, Shaun Cardiff.
Thanks also to: Sally Hardy and Jonathon Webster for offering to host this Guide on the NICHE website; all who contributed imagery for the videos; Barry Hunt of Hunt Films, Eire, who edited the videos and the website designer Scarlet William.
Kim is also grateful to the many opportunities she has been given and the support she has been provided by colleagues and friends across her own path of development linked to developing flourishing cultures through skilled facilitation, enabling leadership and multiprofessional consultant practice. There are so many individuals to name so instead I have identified those workplaces in which this journey of mutual learning and inquiry happened: The Institute of Advanced Nursing Education, Royal College of Nursing; The Chelsea & Westminster Nursing Development Unit/Intensive care Unit; The Practice Development Team, RCN Institute; The International Practice Development Collaborative; The England Centre for Practice Development, Canterbury Christ Church University; ImpACT Research Group, University of East Anglia; Health Education England National Team Multi-professional Advanced and Consultant Practice.
Kim would also like to recognise the support, commitment and informal critical companionship provided by Angie Titchen since the mid 1990s when we were both working at the RCN Institute. We were experiencing parallel doctoral research journeys at the time using participatory action research (which was a rare research approach used in healthcare then!). At the beginning, little did we know that there would be so many shared insights between Freedom to Practice and operationalising and researching the consultant nurse role and the transformational flourishing cultures that result.
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Link to Main Annotated References List
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY STATEMENT FOR HOME PAGE
The videos and resources were piloted in the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust and the University of East Anglia programme. The agreement was that they would, subsequently, become available online and potentially be available beyond the multi-professional consultant practitioner career (progression) pathway to other professional roles.
Whilst individual ownership of the intellectual property remains with those who created, or helped to create, the videos and resources, they agreed that the videos and resources be made freely available.
This means: (1) there is no payment for the use of the videos and resources; (2) permission to use them does not have to be sought from the creator(s) and (3) people can choose to use the videos and resources, either unmodified or tailored, according to their specific needs and contexts within their professional work.