In 1995, San Diego Children’s Mental Health Services, through system of care reform, created a more integrated, comprehensive, and family-focused system for coordinating care and service delivery. Through this process, collaborative relationships became more formally established between, Children’s Mental Health Services (CMHS), Probation, Children’s Residential Services, Education, Providers, Family Members and the Community. The community recognizes the training program, the County of San Diego Children’s System of Care Wraparound Training Academy (The Academy) as one of its key strengths.

The San Diego Wraparound Training Academy

The San Diego Wraparound Training Academy grew out of a grass roots effort and has become a central part of the children’s system of care infrastructure. During the planning phase of the system of care, developers recognized that intensive cross-systems training was needed. The design for the Academy standardized the concept of wraparound within system of care across multiple public and private child-serving agencies. A core message of each training is how to authentically partner with family and youth. The Academy has since become an essential strategy to sustain children’s system of care practice. One outcome of the Academy has been building capacity for broad based system change.

Participants in the Academy (experienced staff from mental health, probation, education, child welfare, and private providers) are educated on the Wraparound philosophy and process. Participants then have the opportunity to implement the wraparound process for a family actively in need of services. In this way, the training provides both educational and experiential opportunities. Trainees receive up-to-date information, ongoing consultation, and monthly group supervision.

The Academy has three major goals. These are to

1. infuse system of care values and principles in all children’s services,
2. standardize local wraparound practice, and
3. model public, private, and family/youth partnership.

The Academy’s training has facilitated the infusion of system of care values. One unique aspect is our Training Teams, which model the public, private and family partnership. Family members, probation officers, child welfare social workers, clinicians, providers, and educators have all become trainers in the system of care. The system of care philosophy is then disseminated into different organizational cultures. For example, the probation officers that were trained in the Academy’s Training for Trainers program now provide Wraparound training as part of core classes for incoming Juvenile Field Services probation officers. Our hope is to eventually provide cross-systems orientation for all new staff coming into the child serving public agencies.

The cross-system work in San Diego has been facilitated by the presence of multiple federal, state and local initiatives. These include the SAMHSA system of care community grant, California’s AB3015, probation challenge grant, the child welfare Family-to-Family Initiative, and the Community Youth Development Initiative. The Academy serves all of these programs, integrating individual initiatives into larger coordinated systems efforts.

The Academy has ongoing efforts to standardize local wraparound practice across the community. Our local approach has been influenced by concepts introduced by John VanDenBerg and Pat Miles in their 1998 “San Diego Wraparound Kickoff” and subsequent individualized consultation from Neil Brown.

Our third goal of modeling and promoting public, private and family partnerships in every aspect of our work arises from the Academy’s own origins. The Academy is truly community owned – having emerged from a grass root development driven by families and line staff from the public and private sectors. From the inception, family members have been key players in the design, development, and implementation. Family members are on every committee, including leadership groups, training, and supervision teams. As a result of this early history, the Academy continues to promote openness to working closely with family members both in our work and in the broader work of systems of care. Over the years, our original pioneers have been promoted into leadership positions throughout the system of care, and these values have become more firmly established.

Other Academy Activities

The Wrap Academy’s activities are not event driven and go beyond providing immediate training to providers and family members. We also engage in numerous activities as directed by the Children’s System of Care stakeholders. Our products include:

• Annual Children’s System of Care Conference
• Annual Children’s System of Care Training Plan
• Annual Children’s System of Care Wraparound Academy Report
• Training for Trainers Program (30 Participants from public private and family sectors)
• Monthly Wraparound Supervisors meetings
• Monthly Regional Group Supervision sessions
• Monthly Oversight Group (P & P for Academy)
• HHSA Training & Development classes (Integration with HHSA)
• The Role of Families in Wraparound offered 3x per year
• Flexible Fund standards Task Force
• Developing Children’s System of Care/ Wraparound Orientation for Probation Dept
• Children’s System of Care Sustainability Matrix developed for Children’s System of Care annual retreat

In addition, we are always updating and revising our Academy training modules to keep up with the evolution of our children’s system of care.

Sustainability

The fact that we have a grassroots history and have developed a sense of community ownership will feed our sustainability. We have attended carefully to building local capacity, and now have trainers from the public, private, and family sectors. As we mature, we continue to build buy-in from all partners in our system of care.

The Academy is in the process of developing a certificate for graduates. The criteria for graduation will be finalized in May 2003.

Despite the impact of the state budget crisis and the sun-setting of our federal community grant (from SAMHSA), San Diego continues its commitment to the implementation of system of care values and principles. This commitment is demonstrated with programs and policies designed to support Children’s System of Care practice.