CredAbility

Tim Spearin, Vice President, Quality Assurance

COA Standards for Private Organizations

CredAbility has been accredited by the Council on Accreditation (COA) since 1996.  Reaccreditation attests that a member organization continues to meet the highest national operating standards as set by the COA.  It also provides assurance that CredAbility is performing services which the community needs, conducting its operations and funds successfully.  Although there are several compelling reasons for our organization to remain accredited by the COA, the main benefit is that it allows periodic examinations of our operations as well as offers new insights and opportunities for organizational change. We see accreditation not as an end in and of itself, but rather one more tool by which our agency can gauge how well we are meeting our mission while also striving to achieve new levels of excellence.  The COA reaccreditation process provides constructive feedback and specific, tangible examples of how we can make CredAbility even stronger.  

For example, CredAbility established an internal committee of individuals from each business unit to routinely gather required documents to prove CredAbility adherence to the many COA standards.  These employees also act as the point of contact for managers in their departments who may become involved in providing needed documentation. This committee allows us to be well organized to achieve our goals in a timely and methodical manner consistently achieving high marks from the COA on-site review team.   Our Quality Assurance department oversees this committee as well as the entire reaccreditation effort itself; tools and resources are shared to ensure accurate and timely submissions as well as support provided for promoting the spirit of procedural documentation, auditing of results, use of client feedback and the creation of training events as a result of our COA self-study review and findings.

CredAbility is proud to be accredited by the Council on Accreditation.  We have found this distinction to be meaningful when representing ourselves externally as yet another way to validate the quality of our services to consumers.  However, it truly is a measure of excellence to gauge how well we truly live our mission and core values.  We look forward to our continues relationship with the COA and to reaping the rewards of our next reaccreditation effort.