Council on Accreditation

Two significant organizations in the fields of social, health and human services have agreed in principle to a merger early next year.  The boards of the Milwaukee-based Alliance for Strong Families and Communities and the New York City-based Council on Accreditation announced Tuesday that they had signed a nonbinding letter of intent to combine forces if due diligence, now underway, doesn’t surface any unforeseen issues. 

The Council on Accreditation (COA) was founded in 1977 by the Child Welfare League of America and Family Service America (now the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities) to ensure a set of standards are met by human services agencies.

Intercountry adoption advocates fear that the fee structure planned by a new State Department accreditation contractor could threaten the operation of the largest American placing agencies. The fees required by the Intercountry Adoption Accreditation and Maintenance Entity (IAAME), a recently formed nonprofit that now serves as the sole accreditor for international adoption agencies, are pegged to the number of children placed instead of a fixed structure.

The trauma that children and youth in foster care experience is a serious issue which deserves not only our attention, but our concerted action to eliminate it. A recent article in the San Jose Mercury News (SJMN) suggests that Hillsides and a consulting psychiatrist contributed to this trauma after psychotropic medication was prescribed to a former resident who was discharged from our care eight years ago.