When Jasmine walked into the child welfare office for the fifth time in two years, she wasn’t hopeful. She was exhausted. Her youngest, Baby Marcus, had just been diagnosed with a developmental delay. Her middle child, Ava, was nearly three and already showing signs of extreme separation anxiety from bouncing between homes. And her oldest, Tyrell, 14, had just been suspended again — this time for getting into a fight with a teacher who caught him high in the locker room.
Jasmine had already lost custody once. She had regained it with promises she couldn’t keep — a stable job, sobriety, regular therapy. But with two part-time jobs that kept cutting her hours, a drinking habit that had become her coping mechanism, and no one she trusted to watch her kids, she was barely hanging on. “They’re gonna take them again,” she muttered in the hallway, rocking Marcus in his car seat. “And this time, they won’t give ’em back.”
That’s when her caseworker brought up something new: MiiWrap.
Jasmine had heard of wraparound services before, but this sounded different. It wasn’t just a plan for the kids or a case management checklist. It was about her whole family — and more importantly, it was about what she wanted. Not just what the system thought she needed.
She was skeptical. Everyone in her life had made promises before. But with nothing left to lose, she agreed.
The MiiWrap facilitator, Carla, didn’t show up with a clipboard and a list of things to fix. She showed up with questions. Real questions.
“What do you want your life to look like?”
“What’s already working, even a little?”
“What do you need to feel like you can even start to make a change?”
Jasmine had never been asked that before. Not in a way that felt real. She said she wanted to keep her kids. She wanted to get sober, but not in a way that meant losing her job or access to her kids for months. She wanted Tyrell to finish high school. She wanted to stop feeling like she was drowning.
And so the team got to work.
Unlike past programs where caseworkers came and went and Jasmine was kept in the dark, the MiiWrap team was hers. Jasmine helped choose who would be involved. Carla facilitated, but Jasmine’s recovery sponsor joined too. So did the school counselor who really got Tyrell, and a family friend who agreed to step in as a part-time caregiver during appointments.
Tyrell was invited to the table too — not just to be talked about, but to speak for himself. And when he showed up, arms crossed and hoodie up, he surprised everyone: “I’m not trying to end up like my uncles. But nobody listens anyway, so I stopped caring.”
Carla leaned in. “We’re listening now.”
They didn’t start with 20 goals. They started with one for each family member.
For the first time in years, things were hard, but not impossible.
MiiWrap didn’t give Jasmine a magic wand. What it gave her was belief — in herself, in her family, and in the possibility that things could be different.
It gave her a team that didn’t punish her for setbacks — including the night she relapsed and showed up late to pick up Ava. Instead of threatening removal, Carla and the team met the next day. Jasmine admitted what happened. The team tightened the safety net and made a new plan.
Six months later, Jasmine had maintained sobriety. She had a new full-time job that let her be home evenings. Tyrell hadn’t had a disciplinary referral in three months. Ava was enrolled in Head Start. Marcus had started crawling.
And for the first time, Jasmine didn’t feel like a case. She felt like a mom again.
“I didn’t think we were gonna make it,” she said. “I thought we were out of chances. But they gave me the space to find my own reasons. That’s what saved us.”
MiiWrap didn’t just stabilize the family. It rebuilt their hope — from the inside out
Read about this story from the perspective of Jasmine’s long time child welfare case worker.
If you want to explore how MiiWrap might create hope like this in your community, click the button to learn how to get started.
I’ve been in child welfare for over a decade. You learn to guard your hope — not because you don’t care, but because caring too...
When Jasmine walked into the child welfare office for the fifth time in two years, she wasn’t hopeful. She was exhausted. Her youngest, Baby Marcus,...
In human services, we often equate professional development with progress. More training, more exposure, more frameworks, these must mean we’re leveling up our teams, right?...
In helping professions, the work we do matters, deeply. We’re not just checking boxes; we’re intervening in real lives at pivotal moments. And in this...
Most agencies put a lot of faith in training. And it makes sense: training is structured, efficient, and feels like progress. But here’s the problem:...
You’re not imagining it: most professional development doesn’t work. You pull your team into a training. You hope they’ll walk away energized, more skilled, more...
