Children’s Advocacy Centers
Accreditation
Some Tips and Recommendations for CACs Seeking NCA
Accreditation
Ian Danielsen, Coordinator,
GRSCAN CAC,
Richmond, Virginia
I first met Kay Kovacs in autumn of 2006 in
Charlottesville at an Accreditation seminar presented by North Carolina
Chapter Director Cathy Purvis. The irony of this first meeting was not
lost on me; in fact it was quite humbling. Here I was “the newbie”
Director in Richmond, meeting with Kay and others in CACVA-land for the
very first time, and the task before me was to have the SCAN CAC’s
application for NCA Accreditation prepared in just a few months.
Admittedly, for awhile there, I had to wonder if my cart was before my
horse.
Maybe Kay sensed my anxiety, or maybe she just knew from experience that
we in Richmond were facing a real challenge. Whether it was her empathy
or her wisdom, or both, she said to me immediately, that the key for a
new Director in a young CAC is that “…you don’t have to reinvent the
wheel,” that much has already been done, and that all the answers
already exist, that you just have to seek them out and adapt them to
your own community’s needs.
I have embraced those words as a mantra for the past year, and I feel so
confident that this premise was critical to our success. It is the
“Roman Numeral One” from which all the “As and Bs” and “Ones and Twos”
follow.
So thanks Kay; I owe you a beer.
So what follows here is a collection of thoughts, strategies and
practices which helped us along in Richmond as we sought NCA
Accreditation. Please consider these as suggestions, as of course, every
CAC/MDT is unique, as are the individuals who comprise them.
And I apologize in advance for the verbosity thing; if that throws
you--please, save yourself now.
And I have to add this one additional caveat. Please don’t look at these
recommendations as a portrayal of us in Richmond as always having been
methodical and “cruising through the water.” In fact, we often found the
process challenging and sometimes a bit bumpy. There was often a sense
of struggle. And there was also often a sense of excitement. And most of
the time it was somewhere in between.
Of course the daily workload doesn’t stop just because you have
undertaken the Accreditation process. Forensic interviews can spike at
precisely the time you are facing a deadline, and “perfect storms” like
that can make things kind of nutty. So don’t be surprised or discouraged
if it doesn’t always feel pretty.
I think we were successful in times of such intensity because we managed
to pull together as a team and return our focus to the original mission
of serving children better, and therefore accepted that it was worth it,
even amidst some pressure. In the vernacular of my bluegrass buddy
Bruce, “Sometimes you just gotta step up, and get ‘er done.”
So in that spirit, of “gettin’ ‘er done,” click below for the …
Seven
Habits That We Tried Our Darndest to Employ Which in the End Turned Out
to be Good Enough to Feed the Proverbial Bulldog
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"We
will have met success when every child has access to the services of an
accredited Children's Advocacy Center".