Increasing Youths’ Participation in Team-Based Treatment Planning: The Achieve My Plan Enhancement for Wraparound

Abstract

Wraparound is a frequently implemented approach for providing individualized, community-based care for children and adolescents with serious mental health conditions and, typically, involvement in multiple child—and family-serving systems. Both Wraparound’s principles and its theory of change stress the importance of youths’ active participation throughout. However, research focusing on the experiences of youth in Wraparound indicates that they are often not particularly engaged in the process or participating actively with their teams, and the findings point to a lack of alliance between the young people and their teams. This article describes a randomized study testing the Achieve My Plan (AMP) enhancement for Wraparound, which is intended to increase young people’s satisfaction, active engagement and self-determined participation in Wraparound, as well as their alliance with the team. Study findings showed that, relative to youth who received “as usual” Wraparound, young people who received Wraparound with the AMP enhancement participated more—and in a more active and self-determined manner—with their teams. They also rated their alliance with their Wraparound teams significantly higher. Furthermore, adult team members in the intervention condition rated team meetings as being more productive, and they were more likely to say that the AMP meetings were “much better than usual” team meetings. Findings support the idea that it is possible—using a low-cost, low-“dose” intervention—to enhance young people’s self-determination and their engagement in Wraparound without detracting from team functioning or the satisfaction of other team members.