Wraparound

Wraparound is a type of intensive, individualized care coordination involving a team process that wraps services, supports and resources around a child or youth with a severe emotional or behavioral disorder to meet goals set by the team. Wraparound focuses on collaboratively serving those children and youth with complicated issues who are involved with multiple service systems and often at risk of out-of-home placement. The basic elements of the wraparound approach include:

• The child and family are at the center of the team and actively involved in planning and setting goals that build the strengths, including culture, and needs in the child’s life.
• The team consists of formal service providers and informal community supports closely connected, professionally and personally, to the child’s care and concerns.
• The team meets as necessary to creatively work together to solve problems so as to attain the goals in the child’s plan of care.
• The team tracks progress toward the plan’s goals and updates the plan to respond to changing needs.
• Someone on the team usually serves as the facilitator to engage the family, convene the team and keep everyone informed and involved in their role in realizing the goals of the plan.

As part of their commitment to integrated services and interagency planning, many of Minnesota’s Children’s Mental Health and Family Services Collaboratives and Systems of care promote wraparound in their work with families. Reports of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office and President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health highlighted wraparound as a promising practice.

Minnesota System of Care is piloting high-quality, high-fidelity Wraparound in seven regions across the state.