Preventable ill health makes up approximately 70% of the burden of illness and associated medical costs [Koop, 1995]. Some 50% of preventable mortality and morbidity is due to risk behaviours and lifestyle issues (such as smoking, excessive alcohol use, poor diet and lack of exercise) [McGinnis and Foege, 1993]. However, many health and social care workers do not have the fundamental core competencies of motivational skills (such as: listening, negotiating, exploring, supporting decision making, enhancing client confidence, facilitating self-learning) since this topic is poorly addressed in vocational training. In order for practitioners to promote healthy behaviours and self care and to provide peer support for other professional colleagues, they need to develop these motivational skills. Traditional training approaches for Health and Social Care stress diagnosis and knowledge of best evidence and lead them towards a ?fix-it? role. Yet knowledge of risk is insufficient to motivate people to change. Faced with the lack of skills in this area a group of clinicians and academics from the partnership identified the need to provide workers with training so that they might better deal with chronic diseases and their prevention. Meeting this need is in line with The Copenhagen Declaration (November 2002). The idea of providing motivational skills training is in the mainstream of each partner institution and emerging as an important part of the national educational/health care priorities of the countries involved in the project, e.g. in Belgium, health priorities related to smoking cessation and diabetes prevention encourage engagement with motivational issues; in Slovenia, policy on preventative actions to control risk factors for cardiovascular diseases highlight behaviour change as crucial for success; in the UK, the White Paper ?Choosing Health? stresses supported self-management. The main goal of the project is: to formulate EU Standards for training in motivational skills by developing a European Health and Social Care Motivational Skills Training Programme through work-based action learning initiatives. The direct beneficiaries of the project are: health care and social care workers, university teachers and trainers, other educational institutions. The indirect beneficiaries are: patients, representatives of other sectors e.g. managers, organizations involved in organization development, local authorities, schools and colleges, NGOs. The project will use an action research approach and reflexive learning. It will be pan-European, teamwork oriented and promote inter-sector collaboration. It will utilise a cross-cultural expert panel and allow room for cultural specificity. To ensure quality the team will: ? Draw on its experience of curriculum design, delivery and evaluation to ensure the training package is of high quality and based on best practice. ? Use robust management, evaluation and reporting arrangements. ? Organise the project into work-packages each with identified outputs and activities. Work package leaders will report progress to the management group. Each work-package leader will have a designated ?support partner?. Every partner will have an input into each work-package to ensure trans-nationality and best practice. ? Develop a robust evaluation framework to keep the project in line with the internal project goals and overall LdV objectives; and, ensure that learning is fed into the project throughout. An external evaluator will be appointed to provide an objective input into project evaluation. The evaluation will address the working of the project as a whole; learner experiences; mentor and trainer experiences; and, the management of the project. The Partnership will comprise academic and ?delivery? organisations from UK, France, Belgium, Italy, Slovenia, Spain and Poland.