I just finished the DAFNE course this past week and I feel it was totally worth it.
For the past couple of years i've been adjusting my insulin and carb counting using the carbs & cals book and having short teachings at my annual reviews. But there was still much more to learn.
I'll split the experience in to two different things, 1 - learning and 2 - meeting type 1's.
1 - learning
One of the biggest things I learnt was how to read your BG monitoring diary correctly and making the correct changes to your doses or ratios. The majority of people that haven't had this training probably just write down their results each time they test and then just show it to their specialist at their reviews. That's not what it is for, not solely anyway. The carb counting was very useful even though i knew quite a bit about it already, but the understanding of your results was so important for me.
2 - meeting type 1's
First thing is the other 7 people (6 in my case) are all going to likely be in your sort of area as you are likely visiting the same hospital or nearby for your diabetes clinic. The age ranges are going to be from young to old and how long people have had diabetes will vary greatly. It's great to hear from other type 1's and hear about their experiences.
On my one every one was so nice, we were all enthusiastic and all contributed to the course. That's what you need, people to contribute. One person that shuts themselves off is enough to ruin the dynamics of the group, and for my course everything was awesome.
In fact two of them work in the same area of London as I do and the whole groups exchanged email address so that we can all stay in touch with each other as a group, and the three of us that work in the same area of London have already agreed we should go out for lunch sometime and we can continue our carb counting as a small group to keep us all on track and enthusiastic.
I've never felt so confident and enthusiastic until i went on that course last week and met those people.