mission, vision, and purpose
The NWI envisions a future in which all children and youth are connected to caring adults and have access to appropriate services and supports so they can be healthy, experience positive development, and live and thrive in their homes and communities.
The mission of the National Wraparound Initiative is to promote understanding about the components and benefits of wraparound, and to provide the field with resources and guidance that facilitate high quality and consistent wraparound implementation.
Wraparound care planning and management is a primary component of a coordinated, community-based, family-driven, and youth-guided system of care. When communities and states invest in building support for high-quality wraparound implementation, they also promote meaningful, progressive systems change on behalf of young people with complex needs and their families.
Over the past five years, the National Wraparound Initiative (NWI) has engaged national experts in a process to define the wraparound practice model, develop standards, compile specific strategies and tools, and disseminate information about how to implement the wraparound model in a way that can achieve positive outcomes for youth and families. As a result, the wraparound movement has become more cohesive and more credible, and the research base is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. Wraparound programs and initiatives are more accountable to funders as well as youth and families.
The NWI is now focusing on more directly supporting youth, families, and communities through an expanded scope of work that emphasizes four primary functions:
- Supporting community-level planning and implementation through implementation blueprints, self-assessment tools, and technical assistance.
- Promoting professional development of wraparound staff by providing implementation strategies and tools; a framework for staff development; quality assurance for training and coaching; and access to a national technical assistance network.
- Ensuring accountability through external reviews of practice and a web-based system for tracking implementation and monitoring fidelity and outcomes.
- Sustaining a more vibrant and interactive national community of practice by bringing together hundreds of NWI members and dozens of affiliates nationally who provide energy and resources while also benefiting from sharing information and being linked together.