High quality training of future child and adolescent psychiatrists (CAP) is crucial to deliver good care and to bring the discipline forward scientifically. However, CAP training remains very diverse, which is particularly noticeable in Europe, where historical roots of the field vary considerably from country to country, while practitioners increasingly use the opportunities to choose their workplace freely throughout the EU. In this symposium we explore the effort of inter-country collaboration and standardization of CAP training from several perspectives:

Firstly we will discuss the process of producing the UEMS Training Requirements published in 2014, which lay down the standards of CAP training throughout the EU.

Secondly (in two separate presentations) we present very recent data from the CAP-STATE study , which was initiated by the ESCAP Research Academy and examined the CAP training schemes in 35 European countries in great detail. The first part of this presentation shows the developments during a10 year time span, when a very similar but smaller study was carried out (with involvement of one co-author in both studies). The second part explores themes not covered previously in greater detail (e.g. trainee involvement, training of trainers, financial issues).

Finally we will present an alternative approach in Australia and New Zealand with the recently introduced Royal Australian and NZ College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) Competency Based Fellowship Program (CBFP) and how it is used for Child & Adolescent Psychiatry training including description of its various tools such as Observed Clinical Actives (OCAs), Work Based assessments (WBAs) and Entrusbable Professional Activities (EPAs).