Parent partners are parents or caregivers such as foster parents who have had success in dealing with a difficult child in a child welfare, mental health, or probation system and who become key players on Wraparound teams for families with youths with emotional or behavioral disabilities who are in out-of-home care. Although many studies have been conducted on the Wraparound model, none of them have described the parent partner's role and fidelity to the model. The Parent Partner Fidelity Tool (PPFT) was developed to address this gap in Wraparound research; it is the first tool designed to measure parent partner adherence to the Wraparound model and identify parent partner training and support needs. The 28-item PPFT captures parent partner activities related to the four Wraparound phases designated by the National Wraparound Initiative: engagement, planning, implementation, and transition. Similar PPFT versions are completed by Wraparound facilitators, parent partners, and parents/caregivers to provide multiple perspectives on the parent partner's work. The PPFT pilot testing project was conducted with 14 California Wraparound programs. Analyses of the 585 responses showed good reliability and validity for the PPFT, indicating that it is a psychometrically sound tool. KEY WORDS: model fidelity; parent partner; validation study; Wraparound W raparound, a comprehensive, teambased focus for engaging families with youths with emotional or behavioral disabilities who are in higher levels of out-of-home care, is one of the most important approaches to strengthening families that has been introduced in systems that serve families (Bruns, Burchard, Suter, Leverentz-Brady, & Force, 2004;Mears, Yaffe, & Harris, 2009;Walker & Bruns, 2006a, 2006b). Wraparound helps families prepare for the emancipation or return home of the youth. In California, families qualify for Wraparound through recommendations by a child welfare, mental health, or probation worker to their county's intersystem committee (members from all three systems) that reviews the recommendations and refers the family to a Wraparound program close to where they live. Much of the effectiveness of Wraparound may be due to the team process that embodies collective activity and collective identity (Walker & Schutte, 2004). In addition to a youth, a facilitator (staff person), a parent (or other child caregiver), and other key family members and service providers, California Wraparound teams often include a parent partner. A parent partner is a parent or caregiver such as a foster parent who has had success in the child welfare system and ideally has successfully engaged in a Wraparound program and thus, with appropriate supervision and training, can provide help and guidance to other families in a Wraparound program (Bruns, 2009;Mitchell & Hawkins, 2008). Although the Wraparound approach in general has been found to be effective in improving family functioning, especially when fidelity to the model has been demonstrated (Bruns, 2009;Bruns, Rast, Peterson, Walker, ...
