- Child
- Foster or adoptive family
- Biological family
- Caseworker
- DFS liaison
- Therapist
- Psychiatrist
- CAP attorney
- Occupational Therapist
- Speech Therapist
- Other natural supports
- Other formal supports
A Treatment Team Meeting is an opportunity for the multidisciplinary team supporting the child and family to come together to celebrate successes, to identify needs, to brainstorm ideas how to overcome barriers, and to create a plan how to move forward in supporting the child and family.
The number of participants in a child and family’s treatment team may vary and may be comprised of various roles where each person fulfills a specific need and/or role in the child and family’s life. It is not unusual for each team member to enter the treatment team meeting having their own agenda or a predetermined outlook on the child and/or family. It is the facilitator’s role to organize and structure the meeting in a manner where the tone of the meeting is established at the on-set of the meeting where each participant is aware of the reason why the team is meeting today and how the meeting will be facilitated.
Tips toward facilitating a Treatment Team Meeting
- Welcome your guests and thank them for their time in coming together to participate in today’s Treatment Team Meeting for XYZ family.
- Introduce yourself, explain your role, and ask each attendee to go around the table to introduce themselves and to explain their role in regards to how they are supporting the child and family.
- Set the tone of the meeting immediately by explaining the purpose of today’s meeting by reaffirming that Healthy Minds Treatment Team collaboration acknowledges that “all treatment decisions should come out of the treatment team, that the overall goal is to coordinate care and set common goals that allow the team to work together and minimize wasted time, and to promote accountability, documentation, and teamwork.”
- As the facilitator you should be prepared with your “elevator pitch” in regards to how you intend on opening your treatment team meetings.
- The advantage of working from a multidisciplinary team is that each person brings their own life experience, lens, and ideas to the meeting which contributes to rich brainstorming and planning.
- Acknowledge and emphasize that everyone has a “voice” at the table and that all ideas are valued equally and are important.
- At times you may have team members who are very adamant about their opinions around the child and/or family’s needs and it’s the role of the facilitator to invoke conversation with the team to create a shared understanding how the team is conceptualizing the family’s needs and to move the team into the planning phase in regards to how the team will support the child and family in moving forward toward achieving their treatment goals. This may be easier said than done, but validate that team member’s ideas, ask eliciting questions to better understand their perspective, and remind the team the purpose of why we are meeting today.
Video
This is an example of a functional child and family team meeting from Arizona Department of Health Services/Division of Behavioral Health Services child and family team/wraparound series videos produced by Vroon Vandenberg in 2003. This video may not be exclusive to all the nuances in how a Healthy Minds Treatment Team may be facilitated by it provides and demonstrates several parallels and is an example of a functional Child and Family Team meeting.
This Healthy Minds’ “Therapeutic Thoughts of the Week” is brought to you to provoke self-reflection in regards to the facilitation of a Treatment Team Meeting and to provide some helpful hints to assist you in moving the meeting forward in a positive, respectful and helpful way.
David P. Sanchez, Psy.D, LMFT
Licensed Therapist, Healthy Minds
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