Team Around Me is based around four key principles: 

Strengths based: “The meeting started by acknowledging the client’s achievement and she was overwhelmed by how far she had come, as she generally suffers with low self-esteem. The meeting was extremely uplifting.” 

Meetings begin by everyone in attendance acknowledging strengths, positive attributes and progress made, both by the resident and by the services that support them, before addressing any challenges.  

Trauma informed: “I felt really really empowered” (resident who attended their TAM) 

Many residents report having had negative experiences of accessing services and attending meetings, often rooted in previous trauma going as far back as childhood. Understandably, these adverse past experiences impact on their ability to trust new professionals and support systems, and many people report a sense of powerlessness and a lack of choice when it comes to accessing the range of services, they need to get their multiple needs met. TAM meetings are designed and structured to ensure that the resident has choice, control and agency at all times. They should be prepared and comfortable with the structure of the meeting and who is attending before it happens, and their emotional safety is prioritised throughout.  

Co-produced: “Whenever there was a meeting held about me – my needs, my concerns – I was the only person not in the room.” (Resident speaking about past experiences) 

TAMs are designed to be truly collaborative spaces, where the person’s goals and priorities are central to the discussion. Team Around Me as an approach aims to challenge the traditional power dynamics between professionals and residents, which often result in resident not being invited to meetings which are all about them!  

Systems focussed: “I have never seen a meeting structure that works to identify system blockages. So, the fact that we can actually do action research as we are going on, gives us the potential to have massive long-term impact.”  (TAM stakeholder) 

TAM meetings go beyond focusing on just an individual person. TAMs support attendees to consider how they could tackle blocks and barriers that exist in services, or in the wider ‘system’, which may be preventing a resident from achieving their goals. If a block or barrier can’t be overcome in the meeting, TAMs provide an easy way for services to gather data on recurrent blocks and barriers that might be affecting the people who use their service. This data can be fed back to service leads and commissioners, to evidence what isn’t working and what might need to change.