About Collaborative Systems of Care: The Coordinated Services Team Initiative

Wisconsin's Children's System of Care Vision

Children and families are valued, understood, and supported in their communities.

Principles of the Wraparound Process for Wisconsin Children's System of Care

Family Voice and Choice
Family and youth/child perspectives are intentionally elicited and prioritized during all phases of the wraparound process. Planning is grounded in family members’ perspectives and the team strives to provide options and choices that reflect the family’s values and preferences.
Team-Based
The wraparound team consists of individuals agreed upon by the family and committed to the family through informal, formal, and community support and service relationships.
Natural Supports
The team actively seeks out and encourages the full participation of team members drawn from family members’ networks of interpersonal and community relationships. The wraparound plan reflects activities and interventions that draw on sources of natural support.
COLlaboration
Team members work cooperatively and share responsibility for developing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating a single wraparound plan. The plan reflects a blending of team members’ perspectives, mandates, and resources. The plan guides and coordinates each team member’s work towards meeting the team’s goals.
community-based
The wraparound team implements service and support strategies that take place in the most inclusive, most responsive, most accessible, and least restrictive settings possible and that safely promote child and family integration into home and community life.
Cultural and Linguistic responsiveness
The wraparound process demonstrates respect for and builds on the values, preferences, beliefs, culture, and identity of the child, youth, family, and their community.
Individualized and Developmentally Informed
To achieve the goals laid out in the wraparound plan, the team develops and implements a customized set of strategies, supports, and services.
Strengths-Based
The wraparound process and the wraparound plan identify, build on, and enhance the capabilities, knowledge, skills, and assets of the child and family, their community, and other team members.
Unconditional
The wraparound team does not give up on, blame, or reject children, youth, and their families. When faced with challenges or setbacks, the team continues working toward meeting the needs of the youth and family and achieving the goals in the wraparound plan until the team reaches agreement that a formal wraparound process is no longer necessary.
Outcome-based
The team ties the goals and strategies of the plan to observable or measurable indicators of success, monitors progress in terms of these indicators, and revises the plan accordingly.

Wisconsin Department of Health Services

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) provides funding and support for counties and tribes in Wisconsin to develop and sustain Coordinated Services Team (CST) Initiatives.  For more information, please visit the CST page on the DHS website.

CST Legislation

Wisconsin has been developing collaborative systems of care since 1989.  The original initiatives, Integrated Services Projects (ISP), focused on supporting families with children with Severe Emotional Disabilities (SED) in their homes and communities.  In 2002, the collaborative process used by ISP was expanded with the development of the Coordinated Services Team Initiative.  While CST uses the same wraparound process as ISP, the target group is broader.  Although children with SED continue to be a priority target group, children and families who do not have an SED diagnosis, but do have complex needs and are involved in at least two systems of care are also eligible for involvement.  In 2010, WI State Statute 46.56 that governed ISP initiatives was updated to reflect CST.

Download the full Statute (updated 2010):  State Statute 46.56.

History of the CST Initiative in Wisconsin

Following is a brief summary of the history of the CST Initiative in Wisconsin:
  • 1984: WI received national grant to promote the Child & Adolescent Service System Program approach to address needs of children with SED.    
  • 1984: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation awarded Dane County a five-year $2.5 million grant to develop a wraparound system of care.    
  • 1987 – 1988: Dane and Kenosha Counties received state grants to develop intensive mental health case management projects.    
  • 1989: Wisconsin’s Children Come First Act, State Statute 46.56, was
    enacted.       
  • 1990 – 1995: 18 Children Come First / Integrated Services Projects (ISP) were established       
  • 1995: Wraparound Milwaukee (WAM) was developed with the support of a 6-year, $15 million federal grant. In 1996 WAM (and eventually Dane County) received a contract from the Medicaid program to provide flexible and individualized services to children in home and community settings.       
  • 1996: Waupaca County receives a 5-year Systems Change Grant of $100,000 per year.       
  • 1997 (Oct): Marathon, Lincoln, and Langlade and Forest, Vilas and Oneida counties received a regional 5-year multi-million dollar federal grant and developed the “Northwoods Alliance for Children and Families”.
  • Nov 2000 and early 2001: Division of Supportive Living develops CST Concept Paper – outlining Core Values, expected outcomes, and monitoring responsibilities for CST.
  • 2002: Development of the Coordinated Services Team (CST) Initiative. 
  • 2003 – 2011: Expansion of the Coordinated Services Team Initiative to counties and tribes across Wisconsin.
  • May 13th, 2010: Enactment of WI Act 334 –updated language of SS 46.56 to reflect CST procedures and expectations.  
  • June 30th, 2013: Enactment of WI Act 20 - Statewide expansion of CST.
  • December 19th, 2013 - "CST Initiative Statewide Expansion Funding" memo released by the Department of Health Services to all counties and tribes regarding the opportunity to apply for ongoing CST funding.
  • 2014 - Thirty-four additional counties and tribes applied for and received CST Expansion Funding, which began April 1st.  All 11 tribes in Wisconsin and all but 6 counties are developing or expanding CST initiatives.
  • As of January 1, 2018, 66 counties and all 11 tribes in Wisconsin offer or are developing CST Initiatives.  Additionally, Dane and Milwaukee counties offer a managed care model of this service. 
  • February 2018: The Wisconsin Department of Health Services Division of Care and Treatment Services published a "Children's System of Care: Guiding Document"