How TAC works
The Team Around the Child brings together professionals that would not normally work directly with each other, but all work with children and young people.
The TAC would plan and deliver services in three strategic areas of Lambeth, according to the needs of the children and young people in those locations, which are the same as those used by the Primary Care Trust.
It will require a fundamental change in the way services are delivered and how professionals work together to meet local needs. The two challenges of developing the TAC and the delivery of services based on planning areas will require professionals to work in a different way and to have a range of support mechanisms to enable them to be successful.
These will need to be underpinned by a number of robust procedures and policies that will support the changes envisaged. The timescales, whilst challenging, need to be adhered to, to ensure that these changes are fully embedded by September 2008.
Working together
The TAC will bring together parents and practitioners, regardless of agency boundaries into a small, individualised team for each particular child, who has been identified as vulnerable or with complex needs.
It can be defined as an evolving team of those few practitioners who see the child/young person and family on a regular basis to provide practical support and those who are able to work directly with the child/young person and family as appropriate.
For example teachers, community nurses and psychologists would work together with the family to address the child or young person's needs. The team will work together to plan co-ordinated support from agencies to address problems in a holistic way.
The wide range of skills and knowledge on call enables a whole range of underlying issues to be tackled which are often the root cause of problems. The aim of the TAC is to reduce duplication and support a common way in which we deliver our services.
The function of the TAC
- Agreeing the needs of the child and family.
- Agreeing the family support needs.
- Supporting the child to meet their identified needs.
- Arranging, as necessary, additional support based on a common assessment, as a pathway to targeted and specialist services .
- Reviewing the support given to the child and family.
- Reporting, as required, to other review meetings or resource panels.
- Identify gaps and inform planning and commissioning.
The TAC will operate as a supportive team, rather than as just a group of practitioners and parents. In this way there is direct benefit to parents who need the opportunity to discuss their child and family with key practitioners all in one place and to practitioners who might otherwise feel isolated and unsupported in their work with the child and family.
This will see the establishment of multi-agency teams (teams made up from staff across the partnership) within each of three planning areas. The professionals within the team will provide individual support to meet the needs of individual children with additional needs such as behavioural difficulties, learning difficulties and health needs.
Lead Professional
The people in the TAC will appoint a lead professional who will have the responsibility of ensuring that all agencies provide the services agreed as necessary to meet the needs that were identified during an assessment.
The lead professional acts as a single point of contact for the child or family; coordinates the delivery of actions agreed; reduces overlap and inconsistencies in the services received and takes a lead role in ensuring intended outcomes are achieved by the team.
These multi agency TAC teams will work from children's centres and extended schools to support this new way of working making sure integrated working is being developed in these settings.
The Common Assessment Framework and lead professional role provide the 'glue' binding together the universal and preventative services around a child in a given area.
The implementation and adoption of CAF across the partnership as the 'entry' into preventative and targeted services, as well as the implementation of an e-CAF system (digital availability of CAF) are essential for the operational efficiency of TACs. CYPS have been rolling out awareness events and is now in a position to begin actual CAF and Lead Professional training to practitioners.
We are working in partnership with London councils and all other London authorities to develop the specification and procurement of the electronic solution e-CAF, which is expected in summer 2008.