Promising Practices in Wraparound for Children with Serious Emotional Disturbance and Their Families. Systems of Care: Promising Practices in Children's Mental Health 1998 Series. Volume IV.

This is the fourth volume in a series of monographs from the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Service for Children and Their Families Program, which currently supports 41 comprehensive system of care sites to meet the needs of children with serious emotional disturbances (SED). This volume identifies the essential elements of wraparound services, provides a meta-analysis of the research previously done on the topic, and examines how three sites are turning wraparound into promising practices in their system of care. Chapters address: (1) the history of the wraparound process, including significant legal cases, programmatic roots of the wraparound process, community involvement concepts, and the rapid growth of wraparound; (2) the conceptual framework for wraparound, including the 10 essential elements and 10 requirements for implementation of wraparound at the practice level (requirements for a referral mechanism, resource coordinators, formation of the child and family teams, and an interactive team process and formation of partnerships to develop individualized plans); (3) 3 wraparound model sites; (4) the findings of the state/territory wraparound survey (n=55) that indicate 88 percent are providing wraparound services; (5) training and quality monitoring; and (6) case studies of wraparound services. Appendices include values and principles for the system of care, wraparound survey of state child mental health directors, and potential elements essential to the wraparound process. (Contains approximately 50 references.) (CR)