In
traditional approaches to children with complex needs practitioners
have worked separately, providing many families with a fragmented
service. This manual addresses how to join these services together
and argues that effective early support can only be achieved if
key practitioners take time to establish better working relationships
with parents and with each other. The author has designed the
family-centred Team-Around-the-Child model (TAC) as a structure
for this close collaboration and offers here an account of its
philosophy, principles, outcomes and management.
Each
child’s TAC has a Team Leader who functions as the family’s multi-agency
Keyworker with a task list which is purposely limited to prevent
overload. In this way, successful TAC projects have been established
with only modest additional resources. The author presents a vision
of effective early support for all families who have a child with
complex needs and suggests that this is dependent on a significant
increase in resources. TAC principles and practice have been adopted
by many health trusts and councils. This manual provides first-hand
accounts of three TAC projects and parents’ comments from a fourth.
Contents:
PART I: Effective early support
- Introduction
- Early Support
- TAC: Family-centred early support
- The main practical outcomes of TAC
- The TAC Team Leader as multi-agency Keyworker
- The management of multi-agency support
PART II: TAC in action
- Wolverhampton Keyworking Pilot Project
- Halton Team Around the Child
- Walsall Child Development Service
- Essex Holistic Planning Model
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