Simcoe
Community Services in Barrie,
Ontario was the first Canadian organization to receive CQL Person-centered Excellence Accreditation. We sat down with Maxine Johnson, Continuous Quality Improvement Manager and Jacquie
McKnight, CQI Coordinator to discuss their accreditation experience.
Why did you choose CQL for Accreditation?
CQL
values are based on assisting people to discover and define their own personal
quality of life, not just quality in general terms. CQL helps organizations to realize that
systems which drive organizations are important, but they do need to be person
focused. These values support the values of Simcoe Community Services.
Tell us about how your organization prepared for your Accreditation
Visit.
We
reviewed the What Really Matters – A Guide to Person-centered Excellence and participated in two conference calls with CQL so we knew what was expected of us,
pulled together our stakeholder focus group and just did it! In addition we
pulled together “Team Excellence”. People who not only represented our
stakeholders but who also demonstrated excellence in their everyday
interactions/work. This group promoted an organizational awareness regarding person-centered excellence and played a key role in ensuring everyone was able
to participate fully and enjoy this accreditation process.
Tell us about your Aha moments.
Give
people the opportunity to have a voice and people will tell you. We have always
known this in principle however to witness all of our stakeholders together
standing up and speaking out was “aha” this
is what happens when people are given a real and meaningful opportunity to have
a voice!
What do you think will be the impact of CQL Accreditation on
the people you support and the staff who offers and services?
Accreditation brought us
together as an organization rather than operating as different departments or
divisions. Our focus is on what really matters to people – we are able to
support people to define their personal quality of life and measure the
quality of our support enabling us to integrate what we learn into person
directed and organizational planning.
This process regenerated
us, strengthened our focus and created amazing energy which was felt by all of
our stakeholders.
What
are your next steps and how can CQL help you implement the changes you
identified and prioritized during the Accreditation visit?
The work plan has been
submitted to CQL and shared with all stakeholders. As we move forward with
actions linked to our plan our stakeholders will be actively involved, CQL had
identified “check-in points” so that we stay accountable to our goals and
stakeholders.
Anything
else you would like to say about CQL or the Accreditation Process?
The process as a whole
was not a stressful as we anticipated. There was not a lot of work to be done
up front. The work begins after accreditation. Confirming for us that
accreditation is an event in time – what really matters is ensuring we focus on
personal quality of life for people each and every day.
For more information on Simcoe Community Services click here .
© 2011 CQL | The Council on Quality and Leadership