nwi across the USA!
National Partnerships | State Initiatives | Local Initiatives
The National Wraparound Initiative has four primary goals: To support community implementation of wraparound, to promote professional development of wraparound staff, to ensure accountability, and to sustain a vibrant national community of practice.
One way the NWI is achieving these goals is by disseminating information and providing access to resources through this website. Another way is by allowing individuals and organizations to join the NWI. Once they become members or subscribers, individuals and organizations involved in wraparound are connected to each other and can network with wraparound initiatives around the country and beyond.
The NWI also works to achieve its goals through a number of national, state, and local partnerships. Just a few examples of these partnerships and projects are presented below.
National Partnerships
The NWI is working with the Child, Adolescent, and Family Branch of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to support our common vision of a future in which all children and their families live, learn, work, and participate fully in communities where they experience joy, health, love, and hope. As a primary funder of the NWI, the Branch is supporting NWI to develop several collections of wraparound resources and tools (e.g., an expanded online wraparound toolkit and Implementation Guide), as well as more targeted resources and tools in key areas such as professional development (e.g., a definition of core skillsets for wraparound staff) and accountability (e.g., a web-based outcomes tracking system). SAMHSA support also allows the NWI to conduct a series of webinar trainings on topics critical to wraparound initiatives.
As part of a task order, the NWI also works closely with the Technical Assistance Partnership for Child and Family Mental Health (TAP) as it provides assistance to federally funded system of care communities. For example, the NWI is developing an interactive set of implementation resources for system of care communities, conducting assessments of communities’ implementation needs, supporting TAP’s TA partners through web-based and in-person trainings, and providing hands-on, individualized support to funded communities and tribal nations across the USA.
The Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) works with state and federal agencies, health plans, and providers to develop innovative programs that better serve Medicaid beneficiaries with complex and high-cost health care needs. The NWI is now part of a federally-funded multi-state collaborative, coordinated by CHCS and involving Maryland, Georgia, and Wyoming, that will work to improve quality and reduce costs for children with serious behavioral health disorders. The model to be developed and tested incorporates use of health information technology, wraparound care coordination, family and youth peer specialists, and financing strategies that coordinate financing streams.
The NWI is a key partner in a new initiative headed by the Georgetown University Technical Assistance Center for Children’s Mental Health to provide consultation and TA to the ten U.S. states that have received 1915(c) Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility (PRTF) waivers. The NWI will work with Georgetown and the University of Maryland Innovations Institute to support wraparound implementation in these states, assess the quality of wraparound that is implemented with families, and evaluate the quality of wraparound training and TA that is provided.
State Initiatives
In Maryland, the NWI is currently working with the University of Maryland Innovations Institute to develop a training, coaching, and certification model for Maryland’s Care Management Entities that is based on the theory of change for wraparound.
In California, the California Institute for Mental Health (CIMH) is partnering with the National Wraparound Initiative (NWI) to support the model adherent implementation of Wraparound as a strategy for improving outcomes. This ambitious two-year project integrated training, coaching, staff certification, and wraparound quality and fidelity monitoring into nine counties across California using CIMH’s Development team model as an operating system.
In Oregon, the NWI is collaborating with the state Department of Addictions and Mental Health to monitor the development of local community capacity to support wraparound in the communities that were recently selected as pilot sites for the statewide wraparound initiative.
The Wraparound Evaluation and Research Team(WERT), the accountability “wing” of the NWI, is supporting statewide wraparound implementation in several states. Most commonly, NWI supports local evaluation of wraparound implementation and outcomes using different combinations of measures such as the Wraparound Fidelity Index, Team Observation Measure, and Community Supports for Wraparound Inventory. In these states, WERT staff support sample identification, data collection, interpretation of results, report writing and data use. Just a few states contracting with the NWI to conduct these evaluations include:
- Massachusetts, as part of their statewide Children’s Behavioral Heath Initiative,
- Pennsylvania, through support from the state’s Youth and Family Training Institute and
- The State of Maine, through its Wraparound Maine project.
Local Initiatives
The NWI supports literally dozens of local communities and wraparound initiatives through consultation, targeted technical assistance, and support to local evaluation, as well as more intensive partnerships. A few examples are listed below:
In Los Angeles County, California, NWI resources have been instrumental in the development of materials by the L.A. Training Consortium, a group of experts affiliated with San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center, Inc., Hathaway-Sycamores, Star View, and Vista Del Mar who are collaborating to provide support for implementation of model-adherent wraparound for thousands of youth by over 30 provider organizations across California’s largest county.
In Clark County, Nevada, as part of a follow-up to a three-year National Institute of Mental Health research grant, the NWI is providing technical assistance to the Division of Child and Family Services to provide more consistent support to wraparound implementation for over 300 youth involved in the mental health and child welfare systems in and around Las Vegas.
In Yakima County, Washington, Galveston, Texas, and several other local communities, the NWI was written into the local system of care grant to provide implementation guidance and fidelity evaluation for the system of care project.