Work in progress

This is a new development, and has not yet been field-tested. Feedback is very welcome to the AMBIT project at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families.

The Client’s Wheel: parallel processes

A matched (segment-for-segment) version of the AMBIT Wheel

The client's version of the wheel is designed as a "mirror image" - to be stuck on the back of the worker's standard version of the AMBIT Wheel in order to create a double-sided wheel, in which each segment relates to a parallel process on the other side.


The client’s version of the wheel simply emphasises the parallel processes that worker and client must be engaged in if help is to become helpful and sustainable. The two wheels can be printed in ‘mirror image’ on opposite sides of a single card, so that the paired and equivalent sections form ‘two sides of the same coin’.

Working with Help

Before anything useful can occur, the client first needs to engage in a helping relationship (the Working with Help quadrant parallels Working with your TEAM for the worker)

Where the worker’s stance is directed at the formation of an individual keyworker relationship...

...in reciprocation, the client’s first "task" is Trusting Help. This goes to the heart of the theory of Epistemic Trust, which if established in that worker, allows Engagement.

While the worker counteracts the risks associated with forming such intense keyworking relationships by placing equal emphasis on the requirement for a Keyworker well-connected to wider team (who help them to keep their balance in this work)...

...so in turn, the client may hope to increase the extent to which they are Understanding Help. Being able to witness the helping relationships (with colleagues) that are modelled by their keyworker offers opportunities to understand the nature of the help that is on offer: for instance, understanding that their worker is not an omnipotent lone ranger, that there are responsible layers of supervision, that receiving help - as their worker obviously and explicitly does from their team-mates - is less a sign of weakness or failure, and more one of professionalism, adulthood or mastery.

Making help work

The client's Making help work quadrant parallels Working with your NETWORKS for the worker

The worker’s efforts to ensure that efforts towards helping are directed at Working in multiple domains (individual, family, education/employment, peers, etc) are echoed by an invitation...

...for the client to collaborate to ensure that the work is Covering all my needs: there is an emphasis on the expertise of the client here, in the sense that appropriate Assessment requires their help so that any help offered is actually helping with the things that matter.

As a rich multi-domain and multi-modal package of interventions is developed, almost inevitably involving other workers and other agencies, the client witnesses the efforts of their worker in Taking Responsibility for integration wherever they have influence in these workstreams.

In turn, the client witnesses and is ultimately invited to shares or take responsibility for the work of Balancing and organising help; managing the various forms of help that they are receiving, which will include making sense of (Mentalizing) the actions of the different players, and if necessary - helped by their worker - helping the different players to make sense of and accommodate each other’s roles.

Working with myself

With the foundations for ‘help that is likely to be helpful’ in place, the client may now be better placed to take more responsibility for Working with my Self (and the key relationships that sustain or undermine this), which parallels the worker's quadrant Working with your CLIENT.

Here, the effort of the worker to identify and work on Scaffolding existing relationships to allow for repair (starting with the client’s relationship to their own self, extending to family or carers, key friends and other workers) invites...

...the client to consider in parallel what are the Relationships that matter for them, and the kinds of work that repair and strengthening these might require.

As they engage in that work, the worker’s counterbalancing focus on Managing Risk - sometimes involving more active interventions, aside from simply averting disasters, evokes a similar focus in...

...the client who is invited to reflect on what is required to assure Basic Safety in their life, recognising perhaps that once basic safety is assured, more creative thinking an energy can be directed towards questions of improving quality.

Learning what works

There is a more future-facing focus in the bottom quadrant for the client, whose Learning what Works parallels LEARNING at work for the worker and their team. Here, the task is to begin to distil not just the lessons of what has helped and why, but also the ‘how’ of learning itself - that fine balance between learning from one's own experience and learning from other evidence.

Where the worker must Respect local practice and expertise...

...the client is invited to reflect on what it means to be Learning from my experience (many clients may swing between over-reliance on their instincts and under-confidence in their ability to really learn at all.)

Where the worker must counterbalance respect for local practice and expertise with Respect for Evidence...

...so the client is invited to reflect on how they might be experiencing the benefits of Learning from Others. If worker and client have been successful in building sufficient trust in their helping relationship then the worker might become (helpfully) positioned as part of the “other evidence” that a client comes to incorporate in their thinking and decision-making and there may be grounds for hope that a more lasting shift in the client’s Relationship to help might begin to take effect.

Whether a version of this ‘client’s wheel’ on the back of the standard AMBIT wheel will provide a helpful PsychoEducation field tool for workers struggling to help their clients make sense of the work remains to be seen. If any workers are using a double-sided version of the wheel in the field to help provide a means of explaining the overarching model or framework for what they are trying to achieve, the AMBIT project at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families would be keen to hear feedback!