At the last board meeting we discussed licensing. At the time, I mentioned that we were not trying to get out of accountability. At the time, we had already been researching accreditation organizations.
Niki researched several options and concluded with this organization: CARF.
On the same day, I was talking to a state person and he recommended CARF too. Since then, I spoke to Rodney – and he said they were also looking at CARF for one of their programs.
I feel this would be a good move – but perhaps not this year. It is spendy – and I would expect that. The following is cut and pasted from one of the responses:
Costs Associated with Accreditation: There are basically two fees associated with becoming CARF accredited besides the cost of the standards manual. First there is the Intent Fee of $995.00. This fee would accompany the Intent (or application as some people refer to it). The second fee is the Survey Fee. This fee is assessed based on the information that you include on the Intent. The Survey Fee is $1525.00 per surveyor per day. For example, if your organization is small, or there are only a few programs applying for accreditation, it can be as small as a two surveyor team for two days. That would give you a cost of $6100.00. However, the survey fee is dependent on the information that is included on the intent to survey so the Survey Fee can fluctuate.
At this time, I would recommend we work on this in 2014, but not this year. However, I would like permission (since it is not a budget line item) to purchase the appropriate manual so we can begin to work towards this. My understanding is that the appropriate manual is $167.00.
I have included a few links for you. Also, if you would like – Niki can come to a board meeting and share what she has learned about them.
http://www.carf.org/home/
http://www.carf.org/programdescriptions/cys/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
I have no problem with the initial exploration of the CARF process, so the purchase of the manual makes sense. I have some questions regarding the fees, but that is better suited for a discussion during a board meeting.
I think it would be a good idea to do this in 2014 rather than this year as well. CARF sounds like a good accreditation organization to keep us accountable.