California Wraparound: Building Hope and Opportunity
It has truly been an honor to serve as a California Wraparound Steering Committee member and to partner with its diverse team of leaders dedicated to improving the quality of Wraparound services for the children, youth, and families across the state of California. As I reflect on my professional journey of 30+ years in San Luis Obispo County, I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to serve in the fields of Behavioral Health, San Luis Obispo County Department of Social Services, Juvenile Probation and Family Care Network. Over the years, I have come to believe that Senate Bill 163 (SB 163), which permitted the use of state foster care funds to provide Wraparound to youth and families as an alternative to placement in residential facilities and group homes, is one of the most transformational pieces of legislation the child welfare system has seen, and I would like to share some examples I have had the pleasure to bear witness to.
Wraparound’s ten principles embody the importance of family centered, strengths-based, needs driven and culturally responsive supports, teams and services. The hallmark of the Wraparound process is providing planning opportunities that are family driven and inclusive of the natural support system to empower youth and families to be their very best, as defined by the family.
My own journey has been impacted greatly by the generational challenges my mother faced in her childhood. Mom was a single parent of 7 children who worked tirelessly as a Teacher and a Licensed Social Worker until the age of 80. Her example of resiliency, community, the value of empowerment, and putting one’s faith into action were among the many gifts my mother shared with us. She would say, “No matter how difficult your situation is, you have the responsibility to help each other and those in the community.” The more I learned about SB 163 in the 90’s, I realized my mother had developed her own version of Wraparound in the 1960’s and had embraced the values and principles which are present in today’s California High Fidelity Wraparound Standards and California’s Core Practice Model.
My own journey has been impacted greatly by the generational challenges my mother faced in her childhood.
My first professional experience with Wraparound was in July of 1999 as a Manager with the Juvenile Probation Department. A group of our county systems partners were meeting in San Diego for the first ever California Wraparound Institute Conference – a statewide California Department of Social Services gathering of the child welfare system of care agencies. Our San Luis Obispo County team was in attendance and began to map out our Wraparound implementation plan with the goal of preventing our foster care children and youth from going into residential and/or group homes outside of their communities and to assist the return of our foster care youth currently residing in residential and/or group home care. We aimed to keep families together, or place young people with their extended family members whenever possible.
Through the collective wisdom and hard work of our San Luis Obispo community and system of care partners (i.e., Family and Youth Partners, Family Care Network team, CBO’s, Department of Social Services, Probation, Behavioral Health, the education and court systems, and community leaders, etc.), and utilizing the Wraparound model, we were able to reduce the number of foster youth placed in residential care over the past 25 years from approximately 150 to as little as 8 in January, 2024. Wraparound also played an important role in our local Juvenile Justice reform efforts. We continue to work as a community to address the current gaps in our continuum of care, which includes increasing the number of short-term, therapeutic foster homes, availability of short-term hospital beds, affordable housing, and workforce housing.
With the support of Wrapround funds, our Community Businesses and Donors’ program, TAY Achievers, assists ILP eligible foster youth with case management support and financial assistance to attend college or certified vocational programs. With this support, approximately 100 young people have successfully graduated high school and have gone onto law school, received master’s degrees in social work, and are successful mechanics, cosmetologists, trade workers, business owners, and leaders in their communities. It’s these youth, and those in your community as well, that reflect the positive impact SB 163 and Wraparound has had on transforming child welfare systems. May their success stories inspire hope and guide our collective work ahead as we strive to build a full Continuum of Care for Children, Youth and Families across California.
Read additional articles from this issue of the Wraparound Connections Newsletter!