The ‘Team Around’ approach brings together a team of professionals that will work together with you to identify and offer early help and support. In Wakefield within each of our six community cluster areas we have two Team Around offers – the Team Around Early Years (TAEY) and the Team Around the School (TAS).
How does it work?
So when a concern has been raised, either by you as a parent/carer or one of the Team Around professionals, a request for support can be made with your agreement so that a Team Around meeting can take place.
For the TAEY, the request for support would be by a childcare provider or health visitor, and for the TAS, this would be the child’s school.
Your request for support would then be reviewed at one of the regular meetings each ‘Team Around’ has in every cluster area.
This would involve detailed discussion of the concern, and drawing on their joint knowledge and understanding the Team would make a recommendation of the best package of support to offer, by which service.
Sometimes this might mean professionals from other services are invited or consulted, if it is felt they could contribute to a support plan for your child or family.
This support plan would then be fed back to you, and the service who have been identified as responsible for leading on support would get in touch to agree the plan, discuss timescales, and start date.