4 Years!!!

This morning started off really bad.  Got to work and realized I have some sort of weird orange stain on my pants and my most favoritest sweater has a hole in it.  The hole wouldn't be that big of a deal, but it is about a half inch in diameter and squarely over my right nipple.  Oh well.  I have a meeting in town this afternoon and I can run by the house to change prior to that.  I settle into my office and fire up the laptop to check my email and continue my work in overhauling our website (www.npfc.net, for those of you interested).  Long story short- email and networksolutions are both down, get some news that one of our workers apparently has no brain, one of our case managers puts in her notice, and it won't stop raining (we are trying to start a construction project)!  Bad morning.  Get several texts from the wifey and she is having a bad morning as well.  We'll just wallow in our misery together this evening we decide.

But, about 30 minutes ago something happened.  The FedEx lady showed up.  That's always a good thing.  FedEx never brings bad news.  My secretary brings the package in to me.  It is from COA(the Council on Accreditation- www.coanet.org, you'll have to at least glance at that for the rest of this to make a whole lot of sense).  Generally stuff from them is not bad either.  BUT, I have been anxiously awaiting our final accreditation report from them. 

The Basics
According to our contract with the State, we must be accredited by a national accreditation organization to maintain our licensure as a child caring facility.  The accreditation process basically means we go above and beyond what is both required by the State as well as what is needed to care for the basics of the children.  In other words, being accredited means we do what we do well.  Going through reaccreditation is generally an ongoing process from the time you are accredited till the time of your reaccreditation visits and self study.  Ahh... the self study.  The one I completed back in August to submit to them was 437 pages.  Yes, I basically wrote a very thick book about everything we do, the how and why, and all the supporting reports and numbers that say it works and works well. 

The Process
Like I said it starts from the day you receive your final accreditation report and continues on until the day they show up for your site visit.  The biggest problem for us has been that my predecessor was completely unconcerned with this.  I and we had to spend the last 6 months prior to our site visit scrambling to come up with reports, surveys, and just general documentation to give to them.  That also meant that I had to do a lot of explaining in that self-study.

The Results
After all the crap of typing and organizing and showing everything to the folks that come here for the site visit, you wait.  Our site visit was in November.  The package I received today was the results of all that hard work. 

Basically, one of several different scenarios can play out.  You can not be reaccredited, which basically means the world has come to an end.  You can be reaccredited for one year, which basically means you have or had some problems, but they are or were (supposedly) addressed and they want to check back in a year to make sure things are up to snuff(this is where we were in the process when I cam on board in March of last year, about half way through our one year).  The next scenario is being reaccredited for 2-3 years.  This means you are pretty well doing what you should and even going above that in some instances.  This is where 99% of the organizations going through reaccreditation end up.  The final scenario is to be reaccredited for 4 years.  This means that you have gone well above and beyond; that your organization is a model to others out there and that COA feels like you will continue to do an excellent job so they won't be checking up on you for another 4 years.

Our Report
I'll be honest with you.  I was both excited and very nervous when I opened up this package.  I truly felt like everything was in very good order and that all had gone well.  But, I also knew that things were very much not as they should have been prior to my arrival here.
So I opened up the package, pulled out the fancy bound "Final Accreditation Report", and opened it up.  I began to read, but my eyes were immediately pulled to a date in bold letters in the third paragraph.  August 31, 2012!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Technically our one year reaccreditation ended in August of '07.  We were given a one year extension to August of this year due to 1) having a new CEO (me) come on board, and 2) we wouldn't have been reaccredited as of 08/07, when the initial one year ended.  4 YEARS!!! 

I closed the report.  I shut my door.  I said a long loud prayer.  And to be perfectly honest with each and every one of you, I cried a little. 

I am so very proud of New Pathways for Children.  I am so very proud of all of our staff.  And I have no problem patting myself on the back a little and saying I am proud of myself.  Dadgummit.  This is a big deal and we all did (and do) good.  It is amazing how God can make your day turn around.  It helps make all the bad times make a little more sense as well.  If it weren't for the bad, we wouldn't appreciate the good.  My day started off bad.  But that just made me appreciate all this that much more. 

I just needed to share that with all of you that may find the time in your day to read this.  I'm about to bust and this is the best way for me to shout it from the mountain tops.  I may even pound myself on the chest a couple of times.

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I used to use the following phrase all the time when I was doing counseling work.  It is very cheesy, but it just makes sense to me.  Kinda goes along with the whole theme of this blog.

"Sometimes, when it seems like things are falling apart all around you, that is just God's way of letting things fall into place for you."

I would credit that quote.  But, I am pretty sure that it is original to me.  If not, I am sure someone will point it out to me.