CCAR Industries: A Roadmap For Continuous Improvement

Posted on September 3, 2026

By Laura Flynn, CQL Quality Enhancement Manager

When CCAR Industries partnered with CQL for accreditation, they shared that their goal was to foster a meaningful culture shift by building on their strong policy foundation to ensure policies are consistently reflected in everyday practices and have lasting, positive impacts on the lives of the people they support. Their team approached the entire process with transparency, openness to ideas, and a genuine commitment to learning.

Throughout the accreditation week, CQL observed numerous strengths from strong healthcare oversight and ethical leadership to dedicated staff and a culture that values dignity, informed choice, and community. One area that particularly stood out was CCAR Industries’ thoughtful approach to accessibility. The organization has established a comprehensive Accessibility Plan that is reviewed and updated annually.

Each year, CCAR Industries identifies measurable goals to address barriers across areas such as the physical environment, communication, employment, technology, transportation, attitudes, and financial accessibility. This proactive process ensures that accessibility remains an intentional part of organizational planning, ultimately creating greater opportunities for people to fully participate in their communities.

CCAR Industries embraced feedback to strengthen human rights education and self-advocacy, person-centered practices, staff development, and quality management systems to further enhance the lives of the people they support. They were enthusiastic about involving people in the process of updating their day services and workshop spaces and developing updated vision and value statements as the organization transforms to best support community integration. Accreditation is more than meeting standards; it’s about creating a roadmap for continuous improvement and CCAR Industries’ willingness to reflect, innovate, and invest in meaningful change demonstrates its ongoing commitment to helping people live fulfilling lives.

About CCAR Industries

Since 1969, CCAR Industries has been committed to ensuring that people with disabilities have the opportunity to live, work, and thrive in their communities. Founded by a group of parents determined to create a different future for their children, CCAR continues to build on that legacy by empowering people through individualized supports, meaningful relationships, and community inclusion across rural east central Illinois.

Today, CCAR Industries provides a range of services to children and adults in their community. Services include Early Intervention, Client and Family Support, Community Day Services, and Residential Services. As an organization, they strive to empower lives through individual care and inclusive community support.

CCAR Industries recently achieved Quality Assurances Accreditation. We asked Bobbie Eastin, CCAR Industries’ Executive Director, a series of questions about who they are as an organization, along with their experience with the CQL Accreditation process.

What are your goals as an organization?

While completing our most recent strategic plan, it became apparent that investment was needed to move the agency forward. Our goals focused on the following:

• Investing in our employees by working to improve culture and expanding training opportunities.
• Investing in the agency by developing a formal capital improvement plan, pursuing CQL Quality Assurances Accreditation and diversifying our service lines.
• Investing in our community by researching how we can expand services in a cost neutral way and working to ensure we have the number of direct support professionals (DSPs) necessary to meet the needs of our community.

As an agency, we want to modernize and diversify our services, as well as retain and train the most qualified employees to support people to be part of their communities and realize their dreams.

What organizational values or practices are you most proud of?

If you were to ask an employee of CCAR Industries what the best part is about working at the agency – 99% of the time – they are going to say working with the people we serve. Our employees are compassionate, versatile, dedicated, and consistently focused on the needs and desires of the people they work with. They know them as a person and seek opportunities for them on a daily basis. This could be facilitating a date in the community, attending a concert, going out to eat, etc. While we have a tendency to over support, I can’t say often enough how proud I am of our employees – without them CCAR Industries would not exist. 

We will be using what we’ve learned from the CQL Accreditation to expand the skills of our employees and improve their impact on the agency, the community, and the people we support.

Why did you decide to pursue CQL Accreditation?

CCAR Industries was accredited for many years with another entity; however, we found that their focus was more policy driven and less focused on outcomes. As a result, we found ourselves over supporting people and losing sight of their outcomes and dreams. We saw CQL Accreditation as a driver to challenge our employees at all levels across the agency to improve services. We also felt CQL Accreditation would help us to modernize our service delivery system and provide the data we need to measure our performance an on-going basis.

How did you prepare for your CQL Accreditation?

The executive team and program directors began meeting twice a week 6 months before our review, in addition to time spent watching CQL webinars and recordings about the Basic Assurances®. During our weekly meetings, we trained on the factors and took an honest, hard look at the agency, our policies, procedures, training systems, and service delivery in order to complete the self-assessment. We recognized areas where we were doing well and other areas where we definitely needed more support. Program directors were then charged with sharing information with their program employees about CQL and the Basic Assurances®.

What is the impact of accreditation on your organization as a whole?

CQL Accreditation was a collaborative process that provided an outside perspective and vision for what our services can become. It opened up an unbiased dialogue between the employees, people we serve, stakeholders, and the agency, as well as a mechanism for continuing to maintain this dialogue. CQL has provided the agency with a roadmap of objective milestones and accountability as we move forward to improving our services.

How have the Basic Assurances® improved your systems and practices?

While we are still in the beginning stages of our journey, CQL has provided us with a new perspective and the tools we need to improve the quality of our services. For example, our current program evaluation system has grown stagnant and turned into a data collection system versus a method to identify performance problems or truly develop services. As a result of CQL Accreditation, we are going to use the Basic Assurances® factors to develop a new program evaluation system. We will also be expanding stakeholder input by implementing routine focus groups instead of the simple, annual satisfaction surveys we’ve used in the past. I anticipate that we will continue to implement additional modifications to our systems and practices as we continue implementing our plan of correction and further our accreditation journey.

Have questions about CQL Accreditation?

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Since 1969, CQL | The Council on Quality and Leadership has been a leader in working with human service organizations and systems to continuously define, measure, and improve quality of life and quality of services for youth, adults, and older adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and psychiatric disabilities. CQL offers accreditation, training, certification, research, and consultation services to agencies that share our vision of dignity, opportunity, and community for all people.