Becoming COA accredited offers human service organizations professional recognition for meeting the highest standards in quality service delivery while providing clients with an appropriate tool for effectively evaluating service providers. Organizations that achieve accreditation have reached beyond the minimum licensing standards and made a long-term commitment to strong management, program consistency, outcome measurements, and continuous improvement throughout.

There are ways for an organization to get the most out of its accredited status, including promoting accreditation internally and externally, technology and data protection, fundraising and grant opportunities, and more.

While there are some more obvious benefits of accreditation that can drive revenue and reduce costs, there are also various foundational ideas that one may not have considered. Standards that address key emergency preparedness and response issues as well as human resources management, safety, and security can all be applied to enhance operational efficiencies. Further, being accredited can increase credibility and boost an organization’s reputation to help expand the referral base, attract individuals looking for services, and recruit and retain quality staff.

Learning Objectives

Presenters

Jennifer Flowers
Founder & CEO
Accreditation Guru

Workplace health is tied to reduced turnover, increased productivity, and ultimately client outcomes. In the post-pandemic “Great Resignation” environment, the burden to build resilience and avoid burnout is placed on the already overwhelmed and overworked employee. Just as the proverbial canary cannot be responsible for fixing the toxic elements of the coal mine, employees cannot fix organizational obstacles to workplace happiness.

McKinsey reports that 52% of employees leave because they feel their supervisor does not value them. Meanwhile, supervisors, who often are overburdened by staff vacancies, are dancing as fast as they can in remote and hybrid environments, where it is increasingly difficult to assess employee needs or even their own needs. This workshop will provide tangible solutions for organizational champions who want to impact the current workforce crisis in human services and promote a culture of true wellness, resilience, and psychological safety.

Ultimately, by creating actionable data, organizations that check-in routinely can build a robust mosaic of baselines, success measures, and strategic planning initiatives to engage and retain talent. By doing this, organizational leaders will confidently be able to answer: How are my employees? How’s my team? How are certain subgroups of employees doing?

The canaries no longer need to be sent into the dangerous coal mine. Rather, the coal mine is automated with sensors and alarms to create a safe space for all.

Through an engaging and interactive format, participants will discuss:

Learning Objectives

Presenters

Gwen Koenig
Chief Growth Officer
SigBee

Our transgender youth are facing unconscionable movements to restrict their rights and present concomitant risks to their lives. They are already at greater risk of violence and other traumas, such as homelessness, human trafficking, food insecurity, educational exclusion and failure, and suicide.

Transgender youth of color are at exponential risk across these domains. According to The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ+ Mental Health, 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered suicide in the past year, including more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth. In addition, in a 2022 poll by The Trevor Project, two-thirds of LGBTQ youth reported that the recent debates about state laws restricting the rights of transgender people impacted their mental health negatively. This impact is even more dramatic among transgender and/or non-binary youth, where more than four in five of them (85%) reported it impacted their mental health negatively.”

The anti-LGBTQ and anti-transgender legislation that’s proposed in Texas, Florida, and other states that follow suit are standard echoes of pan-historical actions to exclude a group from a right, service, opportunity, and space as a means of oppressing them. This formula remains clear and discernable—and when we pare down the exclusionary blueprint of these tactics, we arrive at the certainty that we cannot combat anti-LGBTQ+ exclusion initiatives without pro-inclusion action.

On the other side of these grave facts are the tremendous realities of resilience among our LGBTQ+ youth, when provided the affordable and attainable supports that we can provide them. In this workshop, participants will learn about the barriers to belonging and strategies to transform all spaces into trans-inclusive spaces.

Learning Objectives

Presenters

Jenny Sloan, LMSW CTRT CTRP-C
Clinical Supervisor
Starr Commonwealth

Michael Rosewood, LLMSW CTRP-C
Behavioral Health Clinician
Starr Commonwealth