Flying in Formation: The Power of Wrap-Around Treatment Services
By Jack Vaughan
Mere decades ago, troubled adolescents and young adults struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues had limited support options. If verbal therapy, temporary hospitalizations or short-term rehab programs didn’t quickly eliminate their symptoms, families had little other options to consider.
Today, forward-thinking behavioral health providers embrace a more compassionate and effective approach – the “wrap-around care model”. This new method of care acknowledges the full complexity of family relationships and provides support for the entire family, rather than just addressing one individual. It surrounds struggling youth and their families with tailor-fit layers of intervention, treatment, and positive change. When done correctly, it provides families with the opportunity to better support one another and fly in formation while doing so.
What is Wrap-around Care?
This innovative approach traces its roots back to the 1980’s when forward-thinking providers began questioning the failings of traditional treatment programs. It became clear that siloed behavioral health treatment and an overall lack of family involvement was contributing to soaring relapse rates.
Wrap-around care earned its name because providers began to consciously surround their clients with far more abundant and interconnected services compared to typical isolated therapy appointments or medication hand-offs.
Core principles of wraparound care include:
• Redefining “treatment compliance” as a partnership where providers earn trust and meet people where they are at instead of demanding conformity.
• Ensuring care feels welcoming, hopeful, youth-led, family-focused and culturally understanding.
• Assembling “whatever it takes” services as needed for each youth’s situation, not just offering one-size-fits all options. This includes modifying approaches continually based on real-time successes and setbacks until solutions become sustainable.
• Involving the whole family in the struggling individual’s care, rather than just treating the individual.
• Building layers of support from peers, personal mentors/coaches, clinicians, teachers, and community members so positive connections outweigh isolation.
• Teaching essential life skills like financial literacy, vocational planning, healthy relationship building, emotion regulation, executive functioning and confidence to enable independence.
• Remaining dedicated to unconditional care and persistence, regardless of how many mistakes or setbacks arise along the way.
Essentially, wraparound services provide struggling young people with the physical, emotional, social, occupational and practical tools required for long-term stabilization, as opposed to siloed stop-gap measures.
Improved Outcomes & Enduring Wellness
Studies clearly demonstrate wraparound care’s incredible benefits. Compared to sporadic therapy or short-term rehab, wraparound participants experience:
• Reduced addiction relapse
• Improved academic performance and vocational outcomes
• Higher self-efficacy and purpose
• Improved motivation and meaning
• Healthier family dynamics and social connections
• Lessened emotional distress and fewer crisis interventions needed
Wraparound services also help normalize and destigmatize mental healthcare. Families participate together to improve communication and boundaries from positions of trust instead of fear and anxiety.
Bringing Wellness Home
Another reason why wraparound services are revolutionizing struggling youth outcomes is a direct result of setting. Instead of sterile offices or intimidating inpatient facilities, wraparound care happens in the homes and communities where young people actually live.
Bringing evidence-based treatment into real-world environments allows youth to practice applying new coping strategies and relationship skills directly to triggering situations with professional guidance from trusted mentors and clinicians. Residential treatment programs often isolate clients from reality and separate them from the struggles of daily life. While this separation is sometimes warranted, it doesn’t need to be a first step. When clients discharge from residential treatment, a return to life at home often triggers a relapse because no foundation has been reset at home. Wraparound care is highly effective at providing young adults with the resources they need in order to thrive in the real world. It provides real-time support in real-life settings, thereby sidestepping the issue of sending a young person away and hoping they don’t relapse when they return home.
Also, meeting youth where they are at helps to destigmatize the need for help and creates familiarity. The approach says “you are worthy of care exactly as you are and where you are, without having to go somewhere else to earn it.” What struggling young person wouldn’t benefit feeling respected in this way?
Wraparound care also extends emotional support to others members of a yong person’s life like their family, friends, and loved ones. This builds a web of trusted allies reinforcing positive growth from multiple angles. With consistent nurturing of youths’ complete ecosystem, wraparound treatment facilitates both internal and external growth.
Helping Before Crisis Strikes
Wraparound programs don’t wait for full-blown crises to emerge before surrounding youth with comprehensive care. Typically, families wait until a full-blown crisis occurs before seeking care for their struggling young adult, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The earlier that a family involves wrap-around care, the sooner they can prevent the crisis from occurring in the first place.
When struggling teens and young adults connect early with skilled mentors, they get equipped to handle life’s inevitable stressors before negative coping behaviors emerge. Starting with wraparound prevention and maintaining continuity of care over the years enables resilient and prepared young adults to overcome their challenges and access their potential.
Transforming Youth Struggles at YPM
At Youth Prevention Mentors (YPM), we are committed to empowering and activating young adults and their families through our evidence-based, wrap-around support services. To date, our innovative approach to wrap-around care has helped hundreds of families, across four continents, overcome their difficulties and achieve enduring harmony.
This is because we offer wrap-around services from renowned clinicians in conjunction with our evidence-based mentorship model, which allows for parents to get the support that they need in order to uphold important boundaries, and support their children in a loving, yet reasonable manner. Ultimately, we resolve issues within the context of the family unit, so that each member can thrive.
Connect with us today to learn more about how our approach can help your family today.