Team care plan example

To be developed and reviewed every six months during team meetings.

Prioritising our wellbeing does not just happen, especially for those in the helping professions. It needs to be planned for.

A team care plan is a reflective exercise. It lists things we can do to better understand one another and enhance relationships. It focuses on self and collective care, and is used together with individual supervision wellbeing plans.

Safety includes physical, psychological, social and moral elements. For our brains to think rationally and remain regulated, we must feel sufficiently safe with each other and safe enough within our organisations. This means we need to use a whole-of-organisation trauma- and violence-informed wellbeing focus.

Team care plans reinforce that:

• vicarious trauma and work-related stress are normal and to be expected
• we can learn to regulate our emotions and it is ok and important to seek the support of others
• collective care is crucial to our work
• we need plans to assist us with cumulative impacts of the work.

When we do not take good care of one another, we notice the following impacts on our life, energy levels, health, relationships, and work:

When we do take good care of one another, we notice the following impacts on our life, energy levels, health, relationships, and work:

Identify which emotions are most difficult to manage for us (note that there are often other emotions underneath what looks like anger, such as sadness, shame and frustration):

Identify what types of situations are likely to lead to emotions you identified (such as being ignored, being asked to do more than your share etc.):

Identify the signs that you or those around you notice when your emotions are becoming overwhelming (such as being tearful, fidgeting, pacing, talking fast, becoming irritable):

What do we do when we notice our colleagues transgress boundaries^[1] and become either enmeshed (the hero) or disconnected (the victim) from their clients and work? How do we bring them back to the zone where our best work can occur?

Who can we ‘howl at the moon’^[2] with, who won’t call a mental health check, pathologise us or try to rescue us from this work?’:

Identify five things we can do to support one another more:

When we are starting to transgress these boundaries how do we want others to let us know they have noticed changes and support us?

What do we need from the broader program area or organisation to support our wellbeing?

Adapted from Safety Plans by Sandra Bloom^[3] and Self-care plans by Jenny Dwyer^[4]