Setting the Stage for a Different Type of Meeting

Wraparound meetings are typically quite different from most Special Education or other educational planning meetings. For example, IEP meetings are usually scheduled by professionals who invite families to attend as the school proposes strategies and services. In other words, many traditional school-based planning meetings immediately move to action planning around priorities set by the school. This results in the family functioning as a passive participant who is asked to concur with and accept the design of services proposed by the school rather than as a full partner. To prepare for effective and efficient meetings, a person designated as the wraparound facilitator for a particular youth/family, reaches out to families and their natural supports and engage them in real conversations about their ideas, frustrations, views, values, and dreams regarding their child before team meetings are even scheduled. This is the first step in the wraparound process.

The person who is functioning as designated facilitator for the wraparound team initiates these individual conversations, that occur separately with families (including the youth), teachers, and other core team members. During these initial conversations, the family is assisted in determining who they want on their team, when and where the meetings will be held, and general outcomes for the initial team meeting. These individual conversations are a critical part of team development as well as an important avenue for procuring information that is necessary for effective plan development. This is the beginning of ensuring active family participation and ownership of the process.

A Word of Caution about the Initial Conversation Step

It is important that the facilitator avoid making suggestions for interventions, services or placement options during the initial conversations (unless safety needs are evident and an immediate safety plan is needed). Intervention planning has to occur in a team context; planning interventions without other team members present can undermine the team process and may result in short term approaches that fall short of sustainable change. This may be a challenge for some professionals, such as Special Educators, who have been trained to quickly generate solutions in all their interactions with families (i.e. suggesting a specific service or placement). During this stage of the process, the person working as the Wraparound Facilitator needs to remember that their job is to understand other’s perspectives and opinions. The Wraparound Facilitator is responsible for guiding the team to create collective, long terms solutions that are empowering and effective for all team members. Their job is not to function as the solution seeker but instead set conditions so the team can collaboratively craft solutions. Facilitators must remember to actively listen to the family and other core team members to insure a clear understanding of their perspective so practical long-term solutions that use natural supports to enhance the unique strengths and needs of the youth and family can be realized.

Goals and Outcomes of the Initial Conversation

During the initial conversation, the facilitator needs to be aware of the goals and outcomes they are trying to achieve. The 2 overall goals are:

1. engaging people in a relationship-based process (the art)
2. gathering the necessary information for decision-making and intervention planning (the science).

The following section delineates the outcomes related to these goals and offers suggestions for accomplishing these outcomes during initial conversations with core team members.

Outcome #1: Establish Trust by Hearing the Family’s Story.

In the Hawaiian culture, there is a phrase called “talking story” which means not just exchanging surface pleasantries but discussing the realities of life as truly felt from the heart. The facilitator needs to convey to the family their interest in hearing the realities of their successes, challenges, expectations, and hopes and dreams regarding their child and their family as a whole. During individual conversations with the team facilitator, family members are encouraged to describe their past and current efforts and successes, share their frustrations, and explain their hopes and dreams for their child. Strengths of their child as well as strengths of the family are noted in these initial conversations. As core members of the team being established, family members are encouraged to share the issues and concerns they have regarding their child and to prioritize, from their perspective, what needs the youth (or adults) have that should be addressed by the wraparound team.

It is important that families begin to feel trust and respect during these early conversations. Some families’ previous experiences with systems, including schools, have been less than successful for them. In fact, many families report feelings of blame and criticism associated with their previous contact with service providers. Facilitators need to use active listening skills to express empathy, validate the family’s perspective and make sure the family knows their perspective has been recognized and heard. These skills include clarification, empathizing, paraphrasing, reframing, mirroring, and summarizing. An example includes a statement such as “Sounds like you have had a tough couple of months recently…” . It is also useful to use their words as you give feedback with statements such as: ”It seems as if you are very concerned about…would like help with…feel proud of…”. Facilitators are encouraged to restate basic facts and major ideas expressed and ask for clarification as needed.

The motto of “no blame, no shame” is a critical aspect of the wraparound process. Facilitators and other team members may need to make a conscious effort to avoid judging or blaming while hearing a family’s story as we often are responding in a manner perceived by the family as blaming even if that isn’t our intent. Sometimes this is rather subconscious and other times it may be rather overt (i.e. “I wouldn’t raise my kid that way” or “Why don’t those parents do this for their kid?”) To keep from responding in a blaming or judging manner, it may be helpful for facilitators to keep the following rule of thumb in mind: “When listening to someone’s story, you are not allowed to have an opinion unless there is an imminent safety need”.

The person functioning as the Wraparound Facilitator must think strategically as they gather information during conversations with families and other core team members. The family may not have enough distance from their own story to dispassionately describe what they want or how they want to be treated. The facilitator should be looking for what is said as well as what is not said during these initial conversations. The facilitator helps translate and extract from the family’s story the information that will be useful for productive planning and decision-making so that team meetings are a supportive and helpful experience.

Outcome #2: Establish Commitment to a Team Process

It is easy for a wraparound facilitator, while establishing trust, listening, empathizing and validating perspectives to inadvertently convey that their role is to “fix” everything for the family or teacher. Therefore it is necessary that facilitators be clear that this conversation is the first step in establishing a team process. Asking about potential team members and meeting location and logistics helps clarify the need for commitment to a team process. Statements such as: “This will be your team and plan. Who could help make this team work for you?” or “What would be a comfortable time and place for you for your team to meet”. Additionally, the facilitator should avoid making promises they cannot keep. The facilitator can’t promise an assignment of a new teacher or class or that things will necessarily get better within a certain time frame. The only real promise the facilitator can make is that people will keep coming back together over time to work on productive and imaginative solutions. The facilitator can’t promise that the process will be easy, peaceful or necessarily successful. The facilitator can promise that the process will be better if the adults commit to proactively work together over time and that the child deserves at least that much.

Outcome #3: Identifying Potential Team Members

During the initial conversation, the facilitator has two opportunities to assist the family in identifying potential team members. The first is to listen for persons mentioned by the youth/family as key people in their lives or people they have felt support from in their daily lives. For example, when asking about strengths/successes at school, a student may mention a specific subject or activity such as social studies or music and the facilitator may ask about the teacher involved as a potential team member. The second strategy for identifying team members is to directly ask the youth/family about people they would like to have on their team. It may be necessary to offer examples of the types of natural supports other youth/families have had on their teams. Often times families need to be encouraged to consider natural support people as they may only have had experience with school and agency employees as team members. The facilitator should avoid canceling out potential team members based on reputation or role. More examples of questions to ask to identify potential team members include:

1. Was there a teacher or professional you worked with who you really felt helped?
2. Who have you relied on for help and support in the past?
3. Who at your child’s school do you trust?
4. What have they done which has been most helpful?
5. Does your son or daughter have any friends who they listen to-would they be helpful?
6. Are there any professionals who you would like to have on the team because of their expertise?
7. When (special event, crisis, etc.) happened who was the first person you called?
   

Outcome #4: Gathering Information for Team Decision-Making

In addition to developing trust and rapport with families and other team members, initial conversations provide critically important information for designing interventions for social and academic learning, behavior change, mental health, basic living supports, and other needs across home, school, and community. To ensure that the initial conversation yields the information needed to develop effective interventions and supports, the facilitator should be focused on obtaining specific types of information through this first step of the wraparound process. This information includes:

1. What is currently working or has worked in the past. Since the focus is to arrange the environment so that success is experienced, the team needs to know about any positive and successful experiences the youth/family are currently having or have had in the past. This includes previous services, supports or strategies used by the family, teacher(s) or other professionals, as well as potential team resources such as a friend or extended family member, coach, teacher, etc. Knowledge of positive experiences the youth/family has had in the past provides tools to prevent failures. For example, the facilitator may learn about an instructional approach that is likely to ensure success in the classroom or a behavioral approach that has worked at home. This is the beginning of creating a rich strength profile, a critical tool for planning.
2. Strengths of the youth as well as of themselves or other team members. Another key component of the strength profile is descriptions of the strengths of the youth, family members and other team members. It is important that the strengths be very specific and functional so that it is clear to see how they could be used. Facilitators should avoid simply listing adjectives as that will not lead the team to strategies. Functional strengths provide team members with more ideas and options. For example, “She volunteers to visit and read to an elderly neighbor who enjoys her company” instead of “She is helpful and empathetic.”
   
   Often when beginning to discuss strengths, families may be put off and/or embarrassed by the discussion of what’s right in their lives. Unless the purpose behind this approach is explained, families may perceive the facilitator as naïve and not ready to deal with the real issues. In addition to identifying the strengths upon which to build the wraparound plan, this approach allows the facilitator to begin to build a relationship with the family. Families who have been part of the Wraparound process often report that the facilitator’s unfailingly positive approach was the thing that they found most helpful in the process. People facilitating the wraparound planning process find it helpful to break the strengths discovery process down into the following categories:
   
   Attitudes/Values: Summarizes the values and attitudes that the family holds. These may speak to strengths in that certain values can be the foundation upon which plans are formed. For example, a family that is independent may have a strong sense of people taking care of their own.
   
   Skills/Abilities: Examples can include hobbies and interests such as woodworking or auto mechanics as well as the fact that this family likes to play together.
   
   Attributes/Features: This category includes descriptive statements one can make about the family. These attributes may include statements about the family as a whole as well as each individual family member. Families may not easily identify descriptors in this category but for many who work with the family, they may be very evident.
   
   Preferences: Statements in this category chronicle family preferences and build a base in which interventions can be matched with the choices of the family. Preference summaries can be fairly mundane in terms of basic likes and dislikes such as food, clothing, entertainment, etc. In addition, inventories can provide detailed statements about family preference in terms of service delivery thus building a base in which family voice and choice is maximized in subsequent planning and delivery.
   
   
3. Needs that are priorities for the youth/family. Issues, concerns, and fears brought up by the youth and family should become priorities for action planning at the team meetings. However, getting to clear statements of the real needs is a challenge for many facilitators and teams. Wraparound is based on the idea that behavior will improve if needs are met. It is often very difficult for families, or for that matter anyone, to state what they need to have a better life. If the family has no context to operate from, many will simply state the need for more services, money, or time. By asking the why of a situation rather then the how, the underlying need is explored and reframed.
   
   The facilitator has to listen to the family’s story to assist them with crafting needs statements for the team’s consideration. The parent may say, “My child needs to do his homework” which really addresses a goal rather than a need. The facilitator should respond by questioning the parent about why the child doesn’t do the homework. Through that questioning the facilitator may connect with a needs statement that the team could address such as “My child needs to feel more confident about completing his homework” or “My child needs to know that when he asks for help others won’t think he’s dumb”. Those needs statements will be brought to the team for consideration in developing the plan. A need statement in a wraparound plan will address the “why” of the situation rather than the “how” of a situation. For example, the why could be the child’s confidence about his reading level and the how could be a peer tutor during reading class.
   
   
4. Typical needs. These are needs typical for other youth of same age, gender, culture, etc. These can be obtained through questions such as “Tell me what a student in your class who is doing OK looks like with regards to work completion.” Or “What does a kid in your family who is doing OK at home look like for you?” This framework is helpful to ground needs and outcomes in reality as well as to ensure the expectations for success in
   specific settings (i.e. the general education classroom) do not exceed those for typical kids.
   
   
5. Resources Available or Resources Needed. Facilitators need to listen for resources the family may have accessed in the past or may need now or in the future. Examples of resources that may be available to a team include:

• Personal support from a family member
• Family physician helping with medical problems
• Church supports
• Other classmates to help student
• School counselor who works on behalf of student
  

  Examples of resources that may be needed by a team include:

• Access to transportation
• A weekend crisis respite option
• Personnel to assist with functional behavior assessment
• Help with medicines
  

Strategies for Pursuing Information through Conversation

As discussed previously, the art of wraparound facilitation involves knowing how to engage the youth/family and other core team members in a conversation so that they can be comfortable and prepared for team meetings. This involves listening to their story and sharing information about the team process while creating a climate of trust and support. The science of wraparound involves capturing the information needed to assess needs (i.e problem behaviors, academic skills, medical problems, housing problems, etc) so that the team can efficiently design interventions likely to support successful experiences for the student and adults in their daily living settings.

The key questions provided below illustrate the types of information you will be seeking in conversations with key team members (i.e. student, family, teacher) as you prepare for team meetings as well as during team meetings. These types of probes can assist in identifying strengths and needs from the perspectives of core team members. This information gathering will ensure that a rich life domain profile is available to the team as they prioritize needs and develop supports, services and interventions to achieve agreed upon outcomes. The art of wraparound involves choosing questions from this protocol and weaving them into conversations in a way that feels comfortable and natural for families. With some families, there may need to be several conversations with families before and between team members to ensure they are engaged in and at ease with the process.

Engaging Professionals in the Wraparound Team Process

The facilitator may also need to engage other professionals (i.e. therapists, probation officers, case workers, etc) into a team process that may be different than their previous experiences working with the youth/family. It is important to recognize that these other professionals (including teachers) may have established roles, goals and previous experiences with the families that need to identified, recognized, and validated as they become engaged in the wraparound team process. The 6 questions below were developed to assist facilitators during their initial conversations with other professionals who have been working with the youth/family. However these questions can also be useful with family members and natural support people who have supported the family in the past.

Guiding Questions #1 and #2 are about role and goal are as useful with teachers and other service providers who are core team members as it is with various family members. It is important to understand how different family members perceive their function or responsibility with the target youth. The facilitator needs to understand other core team members’ perception of their actual role with the youth, not just their job title. Different professionals and family members may have different perceptions about how they should interact with the child or what they want to accomplish (needs/outcomes) based on their perspective of their role as illustrated by the following examples:

• A mother who states her role as disciplinarian and her goal as keeping her younger children safe from the child’s behavior outbursts.
  
• A grandfather who states his role as peacekeeper among other family members.
  
• A Special Education Resource teacher states his role as academic coach who wants to makes sure the student is passing his courses
  
• A 1st grade teacher who states her goal as making sure the student learns how to read before the end of the school year.
  
• A probation officer who states her goal as keeping the student from getting arrested again.
  

Guiding Questions #3-6 address current/past efforts and attempts to provide effective supports and interventions for the youth/family. These questions are useful because they: a) recognize the efforts of teachers, parents and others who have been involved with the youth, and b) they provide important information necessary for designing interventions. Teachers and parents have typically tried different strategies and often they have important information about potential effectiveness. For example, if a teacher has tried to change a student’s schedule or has attempted a home/school communication strategy and come up against roadblocks beyond their capacity to change, team members could be sought who have knowledge or ability to truly implement their ideas. If a parent has attempted to involve their child in an extra curricular activity but has been unable to access transportation or adequate supervision for the activity, the team may be able to brainstorm ways to make it successful. If a strategy initiated by a teacher or family in the past can be altered or expanded upon, their capacity to be effective is enhanced.

Guiding Question #7 provides an initial understanding of what is valued by the youth/family, as well as what they would value or see as helpful. From the perspective of other core team members, this question provides information on what individual service providers define as success.

Steps to Success: A Summary of the Process

Developing the wraparound team and plan has become more clearly defined as a series of steps that can be taught to practitioners, family members, and those who supervise programs and services. It is important that a logical, sequential process be followed, written plans be developed, and that ongoing monitoring of the effectiveness of the plans be inherent in the process. Typically, a person identified as a team facilitator guides the process of developing the team and the plan. This section provides a brief summary of the steps of the wraparound process.

Preparing for the Meeting

1. Initial Conversations. The wraparound facilitator engages core team members in initial conversations before tem meetings are even scheduled. Core team members include family, student, teacher, and others who have frequent contact with or control over major decisions affecting the student. For example, if a child welfare worker has the role of determining a youth’s living environment, they would be considered a core team member along with the parent and/or primary caregiver and the classroom teacher. The initial conversation is perhaps the most critical step of the wraparound process because: a) a supportive, consensus-building context is developed for the family who needs to feel comfortable and confident as they work in partnership with the school and other service providers and b), critical information is gathered to guide decision-making by the team. It is through the initial conversations that the development of a truly effective team and plan is begun. Facilitators who spend enough time achieving the goals and outcomes of the initial conversation are typically rewarded with smooth, efficient and productive team meetings.

Who are We and Why are We Here?

2. Clarify agenda, determine or review logistics/rules for meeting. During initial conversations, the facilitator needs to inquire about timeframes, locations, meeting protocol, and team norms that are acceptable to the family and other core team members (i.e. teacher). Previous experiences with meetings are often part of the frustrations that are shared during the initial conversations as team members are asked about what has worked or not worked in the past. For example, information shared by a family/youth may indicate that previous meetings have felt non-productive, intimidating and frustrating for them. Classroom teachers may also express annoyance at having spent time in meetings that didn’t really help them deal with the child’s behavior or other needs. The facilitator listens carefully to past meeting experiences for indication of needs and to ensure that past negative occurrences are not repeated. If team members have had previous meeting experiences that were positive, find out what made it positive for them as it may be possible to build on that experience. In the video, Peggy describes past meeting experiences that she did not consider helpful or supportive and she also describes how wraparound meetings were positive for her in that she felt people were listening to her and what she wanted for her son.

It is important to make sure all participants are in agreement with the timeframes for the meeting. Teams should create rules or meeting norms that they think are needed to ensure the comfort of key players and prevent past negative meeting experiences from occurring. Possible meeting rules teams can choose from are included in the example box on the left.

3. Introduce Team Members by Role and Goal. People do not become team members based on job title but by their role with the youth/ family. Therefore everyone introduces themselves by their role rather than job title. This is important in establishing the needs of the youth/family as the primary focus of the team and helps clarify why each person is on the team. Once again, the initial conversation is the place to help people identify their role and to determine if their may be some overlap of roles or different perspectives of roles among team members.

4. Develop or Review the Mission Statement. A mission statement is a clear, concise statement that describes why this team exists. It should be agreed upon by the family, school and other core team members who have an active role with the student (i.e., child welfare, mental health or probation). This simple statement should guide the team’s actions to ensure activities are connected to the mission. For example, a mission statement may read: “The student will live at home and succeed at ( neighborhood) school.” The development of the mission statement pulls the team together around a common purpose and frequently is the beginning of a positive partnership between the family and school or other agency representatives. Facilitators and teams may need to help families with a broad mission that reflects a truly improved quality of life. For example, during the video Peggy explains that at one point she just wanted her son to be able to go to school without being sent home or kicked out. However, her wraparound team has helped her realize and be able to articulate more typical desires for her family which include Michael experiencing success at school and at home every day so he can thrive and grow like other kids.

What Information Do We Have or Need to Make Decisions?

5. Start meetings with strengths. All team meetings begin with a discussion and summary of strengths of the student and family. The initial meeting begins with a summary of strengths identified during initial conversations. The facilitator ensures that different perspectives of the child’s strengths (i.e., teacher, student, family) are addressed across multiple life domains (i.e., social, educational, physical). Strengths of the family, teachers and other providers are encouraged as well. All strengths should be stated in specific and functional terms (e.g. likes to help younger kids in wheelchairs in the hallway) as opposed to a list of adjectives (e.g. nice kid). The strength profile should be reviewed and new strengths should be added at all subsequent meetings. This includes celebrating successes of the team as a whole or individual team member accomplishments. Facilitators typically provide or create a visual of the strength profile at the meeting using chart paper, a wall board or distribute copies of a strength summary on a sheet of paper (see page 2 of the Collaborative Team Planning Form). Participants are always asked to add more strengths at this stage of the meeting.

6. Identify Needs Across Life Domains. Based on information obtained during initial conversations, the facilitator summarizes the issues and perspectives of the core team members, pointing out similarities and differences of perspectives among team members. The facilitator guides the team in summarizing all the needs of the student/family across life domains (e.g., safety, social, academic, behavioral). The facilitator leads the team toward typical needs or replacement behaviors with questions such as “What does this student need to function more like a typical student who is doing OK in our school and community”. The student, family and teacher are encouraged to express all needs they perceive as necessary for the student to succeed. The facilitator’s focus should be to identify which needs the team can agree to work on together as a team.

What Do We Want/Need to Accomplish?

7. Prioritizing Needs. After reviewing all the needs identified by collective team members, the team then collectively decides which needs will receive immediate action planning at the current meeting. The people who spend the most time with the youth and those who have the most responsibility for the youth should have the most say in which needs are prioritized for action planning. The team will need to sort through the complete list of needs to determine immediate priorities and which needs require more information before they can design strategies. See Handout 5.4 for questions to guide this prioritizing of needs.

What Action Do We Need/Want to Take and When?

8. Action Planning. The team develops specific strategies designed to meet prioritized needs with clearly defined outcomes. Initial actions may address gathering additional information (e.g., functional behavioral assessment, reading assessment, medical evaluation) so that interventions may be designed. For other need areas, the team may have enough information to immediately move to action planning (e.g. daily communication strategy between home and school, transportation to medical appointments, specific instructional or behavioral interventions). During the action planning, the team focuses on the most efficient, practical, and natural means for accomplishing the outcome they have agreed upon. It is important that the team:

• Stay focused on the need and brainstorm different ways to accomplish needs rather than just proposing categorical service options that have been traditionally available.
• Ensure that strengths and natural supports are evident in every strategy the team proposes.
• Ensure that each action/strategy has a clearly defined outcome (How will we know if it is working?) and specify who will do what, when and where.

How Will We Decide if it is Working and What to do Next?

9. Assign Tasks/timelines, Ensure Commitment and Set Next Meeting Date. The person or persons responsible for implementing given actions must take ownership of the intervention design. Facilitators must ask team members (e.g.,. families, teachers) whether the proposed action will work for them. Teams must take the time to confirm commitment to task(s) completion and ensure common understanding of the intervention’s procedures by those committed to implementation. Ask family (or teacher) “Is this going to work for you?” The person who is supposed to implement the strategy needs to be actively involved in designing it; or it probably won’t work! The date for the next meeting should be set at the current meeting, based on timeframes needed for implementing and monitoring the interventions agreed to by the team. The Action Planning page of the Collaborative Planning Form has a section to indicate a targeted review date which is the date the team decides to meet again to review progress.

Document, Revise, Monitor. A clear consensus regarding needs, strategies, and outcomes, sets the context for a defined team evaluation/monitoring process. Each meeting should begin with a review and rating of progress including actions defined at the previous meeting. If a need has not been met to the team’s satisfaction, a process of refining, redesigning or reevaluating available data should take place. Teams need to accurately define needs and outcomes and collect baseline data as well as data after the intervention has been implemented so they can determine if progress has been made to their satisfaction.

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