CWL® Advanced Features for Supervisors in FAS Outcomes
Using the CWL® and Reports

NOTE: Only IT Administrators, Business Administrators and FAS Administrators and Staff can access this page.

What would you like to learn about?

• Using the CWL® and Reports

• Overview

• About the CWL®

• Completing the CWL®

• The Coaching Plan and Practitioner's Report

• Special Privileges for the Business Administrator Role

• Additional Features and Considerations

Have a question about these topics? Ask FAS!

Overview

In these help topics for the Caregiver Wish List® (CWL®) you will learn everything you need to know about the CWL®, including the advanced features for supervisors. This document is intended to empower your agency to efficiently and effectively use the CWL®.

These reference pages begin with a presentation of all the features that your staff would need to understand, including: general information about the CWL®, how to complete the CWL® either offline or online, creating a Coaching Plan, and viewing the Practitioner's Report. The later sections include explanations of the special privileges that supervisors have in FAS Outcomes as well as some additional features that you will want to consider using.

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About the CWL®

The CWL® is a questionnaire that allows caregivers to report on their child's compliance and their own parenting behavior. It is designed in such a way that allows caregivers to self-discover their parenting strengths and growth opportunities. Growth opportunities is the phrase that refers to parenting skills that the caregiver is currently lacking. Rather than using language that reflects deficiencies, the CWL® adopts a strengths-based, positive approach. The CWL® is organized around six skill areas. FAS suggests the following procedures be adopted when completing the CWL®. The caregiver and practitioner (referred to as the "Coach") sit together while the caregiver responds to the questions, inviting them to "share their story", which enhances the therapeutic alliance. The CWL® is strengths-based and a "no-judgment" attitude should be adopted by the coach when working with the caregiver to answer the questions. Coaches should allow the caregiver to expand on some of their answers where appropriate, letting the caregiver provide some of the context to their specific situations.

There are two versions of the CWL® questions: one for youth who are school aged (kindergarten through high school) and a preschool age version for younger youth. Depending on the circumstances, the CWL® can be completed online, or, if necessary, a copy of the questions can be printed and the answers can be entered on the computer later. Following the questionnaire the practitioner asks the caregiver to identify their top three wishes. Once the caregiver's answers have been entered into the online program (either directly by the caregiver, or later by the practitioner), the next step is to design the CWL® Coaching Plan. The Coaching Plan assesses which skill areas the caregiver has already mastered and which are growth opportunities, allowing the caregiver and professional to make notes about specific target behaviors to work on together. Finally, also available is the Practitioner's Report, which provides you with all of the caregiver's endorsements.

School Age and Preschool Age Versions

There are a few important differences between the school age and preschool age versions of the CWL®. Overall, the preschool age version is very similar to the school age version. The difference is that the preschool age version of the CWL® does not contain questions that address some school issues, such as completing homework, or monitoring issues, such as times the youth is out with friends. FAS assumes that these are inappropriate questions to ask a caregiver about regarding such young children.

A Wish List for Your Child and a Wish List for You

The Caregiver Wish List® assessment is divided into two parts, the Wish List for Your Child and the Wish List for You. First the caregiver completes the Wish List for Your Child--this part of the questionnaire allows parents to describe their child's problematic behavior before moving on to assess their own parenting behavior by completing the Wish List for You. The CWL® is a tool that you are using to help engage parents in the process of facilitating their child's changes in behavior. Completing the CWL® should be viewed as an opportunity for parents to share their stories about raising their child.

Six Areas

The Caregiver Wish List® is based on the scientific literature and pinpoints parenting strategies that are proven to promote child compliance or reduce problematic behaviors. These strategies have been grouped into six broad areas.

Providing Direction and Following Up: The caregiver sets clear expectations and routines and checks to make sure that the youth obeys rules.

Encouraging Good Behavior: The caregiver reasonably reinforces and models good behavior.

Discouraging Undesirable Behavior: The caregiver consistently gives realistic consequences for misbehavior in a calm manner and handles defiance well.

Monitoring Activities: The caregiver is familiar with child's friends and knows about where the child is and what they are doing when with friends.

Connecting Positively with Youth: The caregiver spends quality time with the youth.

Problem-Solving Orientation: The caregiver uses and models good problem-solving skills and presents a "united front" with other caregivers.

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Completing the CWL®

Setting up the Assessment

To start the CWL®, find the client on your "My Client List".

1. Open the "More Options" menu.

2. Select "Start Assessment > CWL".

3. Even though the caregiver will be the one completing the assessment, in FAS Outcomes the client is still the youth. So once you've selected the youth, you'll be prompted to select which caregiver will be completing the assessment. If no caregiver has been entered for that client, you can easily add one by clicking on "Add Caregiver".

4. Once the caregiver has been added to the list, simply click the link "Select this caregiver" to continue.

Fill in the required fields on the CWL® Assessment Set Up page, shown below. Here is where you'll decide whether to use the school age or preschool age version of the assessment. The software will warn you if it suspects that you have chosen the wrong version. For example, if the youth who is being assessed is ten years old and you select the preschool version, a warning will pop-up, suggesting you choose the school version.

Note, the recommended procedure for completing the CWL® is to have the practitioner or coach read the questions aloud to the caregiver. This helps foster an environment where the coach and caregiver are both participating partners and provides a good opportunity to allow the caregiver to expand on any of their answers. The practitioner should allow the caregiver to talk as much as they want when answering the questions. Remember, the more they talk, the more the practitioner learns. When you are ready to begin the assessment, click Start CWL®.

Completing the CWL® Online

Before the assessment starts, the practitioner must select whether to enter the CWL® online or offline. If at all possible, the CWL® should be entered directly online--having the answers put directly into the software allows you to later complete the Coaching Plan. However, if circumstances do not allow for this to happen you do have the option of printing the CWL® questions. When a CWL® is printed it is for a single use and only to be used with the particular client identified on the assessment set up page. Making any copies or re-using the printed form is a violation of copyright.

If you chose "Enter CWL Online", the assessment will begin in a new window. Make sure you have disabled your internet browser's popup blockers, if popup blockers are not disabled the CWL® will not be able to launch.

Remember, the caregiver should answer the questions while thinking about one particular child--at the end of the program they will have the opportunity to comment on problems or difficulties they are having with any of their other children. Note that the CWL® was designed so that every question must be answered in order to move on to the next section. Therefore, if you neglect to answer a question you will get an error message telling you which question was left blank. This can potentially cause a problem if a caregiver feels that they do not know the answer to a particular question. We suggest that you spend some time discussing the question with the caregiver and try to answer it the best you can. One approach would be to choose the answer that indicates there is no problem in that area.

The first screen is the Introduction and Instructions, shown below. These should be read aloud to the caregiver at the beginning of the assessment.

Next the coach and caregiver complete the Wish List for Your Child, which consists of fourteen questions that assess the youth's behavior. (Note that the preschool version only includes twelve of the fourteen questions.) These initial questions help to ease the parent into the process, allowing them to provide the therapist with a contextual basis for their parenting challenges. This gives parents a chance to tell their story without implying blame. We have found that by beginning with questions about the child, caregivers are surprisingly non-defensive and actually quite enthusiastic about getting some coaching on how to address challenges with their child.

After that, the caregiver must complete the Wish List for You. The second set of questions asks about the caregiver's parenting behavior. Below you can see the first screen, however the Wish List for You spans several pages.

Following the questions the therapist asks the caregiver to identify their top three wishes for themselves and their child which can be entered in the fields provided.

Typically caregivers have a very good idea of what their family needs and what would be helpful to them. Examples could include: "Spend more positive time together" or "I would like to do a better job on following through with consequences". It is important to encourage caregivers to choose wishes that they will be able to make come true. For example, a caregiver may want to wish that her husband would stop drinking because he often turns violent when he's drunk. Unfortunately, there is not much she is able to do to bring that about. However, her wish could be modified to a set of procedures for when her husband comes home drunk, such as waking the children and leaving the house and stay with her mother.

Finally, the caregiver is given an opportunity to share any parenting challenges they may be experiencing with other children in the home that were not already mentioned.

Upon completion of the CWL®, the practitioner must log back into the system. At the start of the CWL® assessment the practitioner was automatically logged out of the system for security purposes so that the caregiver cannot see any confidential information. When the assessment is completed, the practitioner is automatically prompted to re-enter their login information for FASOutcomes.

If you login within fifteen minutes of completing the CWL®, the system will recognize that a CWL® has just been completed. It will ask you if you would like to complete a plan for the client, although rather than show the client's full name for privacy purposes it only displays the initials (in case you are logging-in in front of another client).

Completing the CWL Offline

If you chose to print out the CWL® and complete it by hand you have to go back and enter that data into the system before you can design the coaching plan.

This is easy to do, as illustrated below. Start by locating the client in the system.

1. Click on the "More Options" icon next to the client's name.

2. Click "Find Assessments".

3. Now click on the "More Options" icon next to the correct assessment date.

4. Choose to "Enter CWL Online".

Clicking the link will start the assessment. You will easily be able to enter the answers you collected on the paper into the software.

Restarting an Interrupted Assessment

When completing the CWL® online it is possible that it can be interrupted if, for instance, you lose the internet connection or the power goes out in the middle of answering the questions. You have fourteen days to log back in to complete the CWL®. When you restart the questions it will pick up where you left off--beginning with the screen that the respondent was on at the time of the interruption. If you take longer than fourteen days, the caregiver will have to start the interview over from the beginning. To restart an interrupted CWL®, find the client in your My Client's list.

1. Open the "More Options" menu next to the client's name.

2. Click on "Find Assessments".

3. Find the correct assessment and open the "More Options" menu.

4. Select "Restart Online Assessment < 14 days" from the menu.

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The Coaching Plan and Practitioner's Report

The Coaching Plan

The software has built in algorithms that score the caregiver's answers and in turn determine the caregiver's current strengths and growth opportunities in each of the six skill areas. In keeping with the non-judgmental tone set by the CWL® questions, each skill is deemed to be either a "Super Strength" (indicating the caregiver already does this behavior consistently all of the time), "Mostly a Strength" (the caregiver attempts to do this behavior but is not always successful), or a "Growth Opportunity" (the caregiver needs more coaching and practice to successfully do this behavior all of the time). The coaching plan allows the professional to review the results with the caregiver and make notes about specific target behaviors. The coach/practitioner can add a professional summary. The Coaching Plan is shown below.

Note: The image below is of the electronic, editable Coaching Plan. To display it here we have collapsed three of the editable sections: "Your Three Wishes or Goals", "Strengths and Growth Opportunities for Your Child", and "Strengths and Growth Opportunities for You". By default these sections are expanded, but they can be collapsed and expanded at your convenience using the minus and plus signs. We will expand each section and learn about them in more detail next.

The coach and caregiver should sit together and review the CWL® results by designing the Coaching Plan. Rather than focusing on deficits, the CWL® approaches problem areas as opportunities to work on skills that will impact their child's behavior.

If needed, the caregiver and coach can edit the three wishes or goals that were entered during the CWL®, shown here.

You have the ability to filter the results of the Coaching Plan to view the parenting skills by each skill level, as seen below. You may want to highlight all of the parenting behaviors the caregiver is already doing well by reviewing all of the skills that are "Super Strengths" and "Mostly Strengths" first, before reviewing the "Growth Opportunities". Alternatively, you can choose "All" and review each skill domain to determine which aspects could be improved upon.

Below you can see the "Strengths and Growth Opportunities for You" section of the plan. As you go through the skills note that there is a column where the coach can make comments and notes about specific behaviors to target during services. For example, under the skill area "Monitoring Activities", the skill "Monitor After School" is a growth opportunity, and in this example a note that the caregiver will call home at around 3:30 every day to check in was added. Also, each skill area can be collapsed for ease of navigation. A minus sign means it can be collapsed, and a plus sign means it can be expanded.

There is also a section for the Strengths and Growth Opportunities for Your Child which is similar to the section "for You" but is based on the responses to the Wish List for Your Child section of the assessment.

When you have finished reviewing the results, there is a final comment box where the coach can input their professional summary notes before saving the plan. You have the option to "Mark Plan Complete", which we'll discuss more here a little later on.

When the coaching plan is completed, the practitioner can easily print out a copy for the caregiver to take with them. By leaving with a copy of the plan, the caregiver feels empowered, knowing that they are a critical part of the team.

The Practitioner's Report

The Practitioner's Report is divided into two sections: first is a summary of the Wish List for Your Child, then is a summary of the Wish List for You. These contain the questions, answers, skill level, and skill description (Wish List for You only) for each item, all arranged by the six skill areas. The coach may find this report useful to save as part of the client record. Below is a sample report that gives you an overview of what the report is like.

Note: This Practitioner's Report was five pages long, but in the example presented below pages three and four have been omitted as they were simply a continuation of the Wish List for You section. You can see three of the six skill areas in the example, but on the actual report all six skill areas are included.

Accessing the Coaching Plan and Practitioner's Report

While you can access the PDFs for the Coaching Plan and Practitioner's Report from the editable Coaching Plan, you can also access them easily from the Client's Dashboard. If you ever see a client's name underlined in the system, you can click the link to view his or her Client Dashboard. Here you can see the most recent assessment information and view and edit the Coaching Plan. Additionally, you also have access to printable PDFs of the Coaching Plan and Practitioners report, and can also review the three Wishes or Goals specified by the caregiver at the end of the CWL®.