Team around the family

Why Team Around the Family (TAF)?

TAF focuses on early help and interventions. It helps families at the partnership plus level on the continuum of need. It delivers a more effective early support service to children and their families. TAF identifies additional needs and vulnerabilities. It looks at the actions required to meet those needs.

‘Working Together to Safeguard Children 2015’ is a guide to promote the welfare of children. It talks about the importance of assessing need and providing early help:

'Providing early help is more effective in promoting the welfare of children than reacting later. Early help means providing support as soon as a problem emerges, at any point in a child’s life, from the foundation years through to the teenage years.'

Effective early help relies upon local agencies working together to:

• Identify children and families who would benefit from early help
• Make an assessment of the need for early help
• Provide targeted early help services to address the assessed needs of a child and their family.
• Help focus on activity to significantly improve the outcomes for the child.

Who completes the TAF assessment?

TAF is everybody’s business. All professionals working with children and their families in west Cheshire are responsible for completing TAFs.

When to complete a TAF?

When a professional identifies that a family needs the services of more than one agency. A number of interventions may be needed from an organisation. The aim is to support anyone within the family to address unmet needs.

Three likely outcomes

• No worries/concerns
• Support can be met by a single agency
• Support requires a multi agency response. In this case a TAF meeting is arranged. This will include the child, young person and parents.

What is a TAF meeting?

This is an effective method of partner working. It is a good opportunity for all practitioners, along with parents, children and young people to discuss the situation. This can include strengths, needs, issues, options for resolutions, plans for support and services. Discussions will also include how to progress with these.

Who can help with TAF?

Three TAF advisors are on hand to help with your TAF queries. Additionally, if you work in an educational setting, our dedicated Education TAF Team will work with you. They will help you embed TAF in your school, college or nursery. The advisors offer a hands on approach for partners. They provide bespoke support to help with the TAF process in your place of work. They will help you improve the quality of your assessments and action plans. TAF advisors work closely with our TAF champions offering advice and guidance when you need it.

Where do I find more TAF information?

You can visit the Team Around the Family web pages on the EHP News. Information includes:

• TAF information and documentation
• TAF Team contact details
• Details of TAF cluster meetings - a forum for professionals to share good practice, discuss practice issues and raise concerns.

Please ensure you download documents as you need them. This will ensure you are using the most up to date version.

The links below also provide useful information to support the TAF process:

• The multi-agency assessment toolkit (PDF, 698KB) – to support you identifying young people and vulnerable adults at risk
• The Local Safeguarding Children Board website