MiiWrap Coach Training Program

Training Coaches in MiiWrap

Our new method of MiiWrap training is being used with great success within agencies across North America. We are seeing that the use of online training will increase the number of staff who receive training, decrease barriers associated with in-person training like coordinating schedules and arranging travel, and decrease burden on coaches by streamlining learning.

Each staff member who takes the MiiWrap Foundations course is guided through by a Certified MiiWrap coach. We began by teaching coaches who once certified, began training staff in the Foundations of MiiWrap course. Our first cohort of coaches started in November of 2020 and 23 coaches have now completed all or most of the course. The MiiWrap Process Mentors, Jim Rast and Sharon Weber, have facilitated this process.

Details on the Foundations of MiiWrap course

The course is a hybrid approach, with online, book, and remote coach debriefing components. The online component overviews MiiWrap skills, provides opportunity for practice, and includes shadowing videos of staff doing MiiWrap to support visual learners. This is supplemented by the MiiWrap Foundations textbook. All of this is reinforced by weekly virtual coaching to review material and provide feedback on techniques used during practice. Read more about the design of the course from our blog.

The Foundations of MiiWrap course is the first step in the coach MiiWrap journey. After this course, you enroll in the MiiWrap Coaching Workshop, to solidify skills in teaching MiiWrap to staff. You are then prepared to use the MiiWrap Foundations course to teach staff, coaching them through the process in the same way you experienced.

The Coach Training Curriculum

The Coach Training Curriculum is made up of 7 sessions, which can be completed live or virtually. Each session has background reading, in class activities and supplemental materials to support implementation of the concepts taught. The sessions are:

Session One: Introduction to MiiWrap & Coaching

Explains why MiiWrap is the next evolution of wraparound and how it improves engagement, motivation and outcomes for youth and families
Shows coaches how to introduce MiiWrap to staff and others
Defines the roles and functions of coaching in the MiiWrap process and provides the rationales and research about coaching; it describes the theory of change and roles of the coach in creating an environment of ever-increasing quality of and outcomes for MiiWrap.

Session Two: Engaging & Motivating Staff and Strengths-Based
Coaching

Explains the importance of engaged and motivated staff and how to assess current levels of engagement and motivation
Shows coaches strategies to increase engagement and motivation
Strategies for responding sustain talk and resistance
Building staff competence and autonomy
Strengths based coaching and feedforward problem solving

Session Three: Training Staff & Using the eLearning

This session provides and overview to how staff learn
Assessing and using their learning styles
Discussions on the importance of each component in the learning cycle
introduces coaches to all the components of the eLearning, including supplemental materials.
Coaches leave this session armed with the information they need to customize and implement their eLearning program back home.

Session Four: Assessing & Managing Continual Improvement

Discusses the importance of ongoing current assessment to maximize coaching impact
Integrating the MiiWrap Mindset with data-based coaching
What information to you need and what are efficient ways to obtain and keep it up to date
Provides an overview to the online learning management system (LMS) and walks student coaches through the process of using it. The LMS is one of the strengths and benefits of using the eLearning system to train MiiWrap.
Using the LMS to maximize training transfer

Session Five: Debriefing the eLearning & Ongoing Coaching

This session teaches coaches how to most effectively use the information they gathered from each learner in the LMS with our Module Debriefing Guides to create world class debriefing sessions every time.
Coaching is an ongoing process in which we are watching the staff provide MiiWrap, reviewing their documentation and meeting with them on a regular basis to reviews their work.
This session reviews live coaching (watching them do MiiWrap), documentation review, consultative coaching and regularly scheduled individual coaching.
How to set-up and run weekly coaching sessions
On the fly coaching
Affirmations and feedforward problem solving

Session Six: Professional Development & Certification

Addresses the coach’s role in ongoing staff development and certifying staff as MiiWrap practitioners. Ongoing staff development creates a culture of continuous quality improvement and provides a professional credential for staff.
The parallel coaching focus is developing focus during SNCD and again in implementation and responding to sustain talk and ambivalence with behavior change skills.
Staff certification and recertification in MiiWrap

Session Seven: Group Coaching & MiiWrap Learning Organizations

Group coaching is a coach facilitated group process that serves as a forum for discussion and learning. It is a meeting of peers facilitated by a coach/supervisor. The coach/supervisor has a similar role to that of a wraparound facilitator with a youth and family team.
In early sessions, the coach does more “Do For” which quickly shifts to “Do With.” In time, the group moves more to a “Cheer On” phase in which the coach maintains responsibility for the group coaching process but does less and less as the group begins to manage group coaching process.
Creating a MiiWrap Learning Organization focuses on the inter-relatedness component of the coaching theory of change. Creating a team-supported environment within the staff providing MiiWrap will create a culture of learning.
This session addresses multiple strategies to create and strengthen this culture and support. The parallel coaching focus is engaging and motivating team members, monitoring, and improving team support and cohesion within MiiWrap and strengthening natural support systems.

Course Trainers

Dr. Jim Rast, Ph.D. President Vroon VVDB

Dr. Rast has more than 35 years of experience in various settings in human service and healthcare organizations. He has been working with children and families in community-based settings for over 30 years, developing individualized services and systems to support these services. Jim has extensive skills in evaluation, continuous quality improvement, as well as developing and implementing community-based collaborative human services. Jim has developed and trained teams to implement High Fidelity Wraparound in several states and has integrated Motivational Interviewing and High-Fidelity Wraparound together to offer the more enhanced and effective service of MiiWrap.

Brittany Rastsmith, M.A. Executive Vice President of Learning VVDB

Brittany had been designing and implementing training programs for almost a decade and a half, including completely redesigning the orientation and training programs for many child and family-based organizations. She is experienced in bringing the importance and utility of cultural competency, trauma informed care, organizational values, and strengths-based care to new and continuing direct care staff members and volunteers. Brittany has designed wraparound and MiiWrap training and coaching programs for organizations across the country. She has worked directly with child welfare, school-based programs, universities, volunteer programs, residential programs, workforce development programs, and community-based programs. For the last decade, she has focused on creating wildly effective eLearning and hybrid programs to bring trainings to people who would otherwise miss out. Currently, she is focused on making entry level MiiWrap training materials that are accessible to everyone and expanding our online presence.

David Duresky M.A. Motivational Interviewing & MiiWrap Expert &Trainer

David has worked in the field of Social Services, Mental Health and Substance Abuse since 1984 and attained his Master’s Degree in 1989. During that time, he has worked in and directed programs for adults and adolescents, providing services along the full continuum of care. His experience includes supervision of inpatient treatment, detoxification, long and short-term residential programs, outpatient and aftercare programs. David has had the opportunity to be involved in clinical research in the addictions field and was the project director on the Marijuana Treatment Project under the direction of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. He has also authored and co-authored on topics related to addictions and Motivational Interviewing. David has provided Wraparound services, training and coaching since 2003. He gave invaluable input to the MiiWrap textbook with Jim.

David has provided over 500 trainings and presentations at local, state and national conferences. In addition, David has provided direct skill set coaching to over 1,000 staff members related to improving proficiency of Motivational Interviewing and Wraparound.