Together Everyone Achieves More, is an educational experience for pediatric residents at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. From the outset it has been a partnership between parents and health-care providers representing the Southeast Regional Center, Children's Hospital of Wisconsin and the Medical College of Wisconsin. The most important goals of this project are to:

• teach physicians about the impact of special health care needs on a child, a family and the community, and to,
• teach them how to provide a medical home for these children.

A medical home is not a building or house, but an approach to providing primary health care to families that is comprehensive, coordinated, culturally sensitive, accessible and family-centered. The program focuses on the universal feelings, emotions and issues that caring for a child with special needs brings to families, rather than on the specifics of each disease and disability.

Family teachers volunteer to invite residents into their homes and their child's school in order to share their challenges, rewards, needs, beliefs, hopes, and perspectives. This provides the resident a glimpse into the family's reality. In addition, residents visit and learn about various public, private and community resources that help to meet the needs of these children and families. Although residents often enter the program only vaguely aware of what the term "medical home" means, these experiences generally lead the resident to a better understanding of not only what a medical home is, but why it is important and how they can personally provide this type of care for the children in their practice.

Each day during this rotation, the residents reflect in their daily journal on who they met and what they learned. The journals tell a story of young physicians who understand a little more each day about life for these children and families and the importance of primary care that helps a child become everything that he or she is meant to be.

At the end of this three year program, the residents give a presentation titled "How I Will Provide a Medical Home To Children and Youth With Special Health Care Needs, (CYSHCN)." Their presentations give specific ideas and describe the plans that each resident has for providing the best possible care to children with special health care needs. These 45 minute presentations consistently show increased understanding of the social, financial, and emotional costs to families with children with special needs, as well as the potential benefits of a medical home and the barriers that physicians face when providing this type of care.

TEAM was selected by the American Academy of Pediatrics as a model program for educating residents about how to provide a medical home to children with special health care needs.