Allies recently underwent assessment for the continued accreditation of the agency’s supported employment and children’s services and received approval for 3 more years of accreditation.
The evaluation was conducted over a length of time culminating in a visit to the Allies main office from evaluators with the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities, or, CARF International.
“CARF makes it so that our organization can prove we do what we set out to do, and it also helps us to do it better for the future,” Darren Garansi, senior vice president of continuous quality improvement at Allies, said. “It really provides us with a great path for what we can do over the next 5 years or so.”
The CARF evaluation procedure is a peer-review one intended to assist participating organizations in knowledge sharing. For this year’s evaluation, CARF evaluators conducted a blended survey of Allies supported employment and children’s services.
Evaluators are not paid for their service in conducting surveys. In addition, the volunteers selected to evaluate organizations have spent considerable time in the human services sector.
Receiving an outside perspective complete the evaluation is important for agency leadership to see where we stand regarding our mission.
“When someone else tells you that you are meeting that standard, it validates your process and feelings,” Garansi said. “We can really maximize our potential as an agency.”
The evaluation is the most strenuous portion of the process, but the months and years after evaluation are critical. In the ensuring months, Allies is able to implement the recommendations and changes prescribed by CARF investigators.
“We are extremely grateful to CARF International for working with us and helping us to identify innovative strategies and systems to enhance our services,” Mike Haggerty, CEO of Allies, Inc., said. “We are extremely grateful to CARF International for working with us during this process and for helping us see novel ways in which we can even further improve the groundbreaking services we provide.”
“It is really important to be measured by an organization that is not connected to Allies,” Garansi said.