PURPOSE: To learn the good news about students; to get a truly balanced picture of people; to identify the assets already available in the school which can be deployed on behalf of the student; to discover what might appeal to teachers and families in need of support; to explore the student's dreams for the future.

RATIONALE: It is student and family strengths that pull them through life's crisis moments, not their pathology and diagnoses. New types of supports for students within their schools are apt to be most successful if they build on existing strengths of the student, family, teacher and individual building.

PROCESS: Family and student strengths should be gathered in a conversational manner with the student and/or family. In school based wraparound plans, teachers and other key school stakeholders should be given an opportunity to identify strengths at the first possible contact. Generating a strength list can take several meetings, in a variety of locations with both family and school stakeholders. The task is to give people an opportunity to know the whole student, not to attribute etiology or get a service history. If an intervention history is needed, it can be gathered at another time. Typically, when people begin the wraparound process, lots of information is already available and documented, although there is usually not much about the strengths of the student.

METHOD: In terms of working with the family and use a conversational style. Begin a dialogue sharing common sorts of information back and forth. Feel free to model information sharing by telling them about some of your own traits or preferences. If the person has been inadvertently "trained" to respond to members of the professional community with a social history, bring the conversations back to strengths by asking questions.

In working with schools, try to patiently generate a list of strength traits through contact with teachers over time. Both teachers and parent are often too frustrated with the student to identify strengths so the facilitator must use patience and listen for hidden strengths.

DOCUMENTATION: The documentation from a strength assessment involves a list of traits which will be used to start the first meeting. In developing this list, it is important to make sure that both parents and teachers know what is on the list before the first meeting. Parents and teachers who see this strength approach in a meeting, may often feel that their concerns were not heard if they have not had a chance to get used to this list of strengths.

NECESSARY SKILLS: As the process of building a strength-based assessment occurs, the person completing the assessment must have special skills. The first of these includes reframing or viewing the student's individual strengths, talents and capacities rather than labels which have previously been applied. Secondly, a great deal of patience is required as many of the people who are contacted for this process may have a very long history of system involvement. This often results in mistrust. Finally, the ability to begin to build alliances between the teacher and parent is necessary to support.