Do High Fidelity Wraparound Services for Youth With Serious Emotional disturbances save money in the long-term?

treating youth with serious emotional disturbances (sed) is expensive often requiring institutional care. a significant amount of recent federal and state funding has been dedicated to expanding home and community-based services for these youth as an alternative to institutional care. high fidelity wraparound (wrap) is an evolving, evidence-informed practice to help sustain community-based placements for youth with an sed through the use of intensive, customized care coordination among parents, multiple child-serving agencies, and providers. while there is growing evidence on the benefits of wrap, few studies have examined health care spending associated with wrap participation and none have examined spending patterns after the completion of wrap. merging health care spending data from multiple agencies and programs allows for a more complete picture of the health care costs of treating these youth in a system-of-care framework. aims of study: (i) to compare overall health care spending for youth who transitioned from institutional care into wrap (the treatment group) versus youth not receiving wrap (the control group) and (ii) to compare changes in health care spending, overall and by category, for both groups before (the pre-period) and after (the post-period) wrap participation.