Accreditation
Council on Accreditation
The Council on Accreditation (COA) was founded in 1977 by the Child Welfare League of America and the Family Service America (now the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities). With over 40 years of experience in promoting best practice standards, we are a well-respected ally for the human and social services field.COA accredits the full continuum of child welfare, behavioral health, and community-based human and social services for children, youth, adults, and families.
Deliver high quality to our clients:
- Meet best practice standards
- Deliver services with appropriately trained staff
- Ensure that services are culturally competent
- Include clients in the decision-making process
- Provide services in a safe and respectful environment
- Protect clients’ privacy
- Support positive outcomes
Support our staff:
- Protect health and safety
- Minimize risk and liability
- Define professional staff qualifications
- Provide appropriate employee protections
- Ensure a performance evaluation system is in place
- Foster service environments that are efficient, effective, and backed by a culture that embrac-es quality improvement
Support our board
- Put sound financial management practices in place
- Ensure practices are ethical
- Maintain a current, relevant, and monitored strategic plan
- Cultivate effective quality improvement and risk management systems
- Uphold policies and procedures addressing conflicts of interest, preferential treatment, ac-countability, and delegation of authority
Inspire confidence in our donors and funders
- Sustain sound financial practices
- Maintain a performance and quality improvement system
- Keep organizational operations efficient
Meet the need of regulators
- Validate that we deliver high-quality services
- Prevent fraud with risk management policies and mechanisms
COA Fact Sheet
