For Professionals Team Around Me Team Around Me As a charity supporting people experiencing multiple disadvantage, we're committed to overcoming the challenges and barriers the people we support face when trying to access services. We know many of our clients have negative experiences of accessing services and attending meetings, often rooted in previous trauma going as far back as childhood. These adverse past experiences can severely impact their ability to trust new professionals and support systems. Many clients report a sense of powerlessness and a lack of choice when accessing the services they need to meet their multiple needs. For professionals, coordinating multi-agency approaches can be complicated – with obstacles to navigate both at a service and a system level. We developed Team Around Me (TAM) – a strengths-based and trauma-informed model for holding case conferences or multi-agency meetings, creating a new way of working that puts the client at the centre of their support. Why Team Around Me? Research, lived experience, and service experiences indicate that a 'whole system' approach is the most effective way of supporting people experiencing multiple disadvantage. This approach avoids expecting people to meet their needs through engagement with disconnected services, each with its remit, policies, and targets. Effective multi-agency work is necessary within all commissioned services working with this client group. However, without a practical, agreed-upon approach, work can be duplicated or left undone. Services may also have differing views about ownership of actions and risk management, potentially leading to the client's loss of voice and agency. TAM provides a simple, straightforward, and practical framework for creating and implementing multi-agency plans that prioritise the client. TAM also offers a proactive approach for services to transform challenges and barriers into valuable data, informing changes to service design and funding decisions. What is Team Around Me? TAM is a collaborative model for holding case conferences or multi-agency meetings for people experiencing multiple disadvantage, putting the person at the centre of their support. The TAM structure applies to any meeting where professionals convene to support people with care and support needs. Various services refer to these meetings by different names, such as multi-agency meetings, case conferences, professionals' meetings, or MDT meetings, and often need consistent structures or agendas. However, TAM provides a straightforward, consistent, strengths-based, trauma-informed, and co-produced approach to conducting these meetings, applicable in any circumstance, which helps create a sense of unity and support among professionals. What are the aims of the Team Around Me approach? TAM has three primary aims: To put the person at the centre of their support and ensure that their personally identified goals and challenges are central to any actions being agreed and taken. To improve multi-agency working among different services by ensuring shared goals, clarifying each service's responsibilities, and discussing and collaboratively managing any challenges and risks. To enable services to gather data on service-level and systemic issues affecting the people they support, allowing them to provide feedback to system or area leaders to evidence the need for change. Resources Guidance for services Info and FAQs for services Info for clients Info for commissioners and system leaders Workshop outline