HFA Accreditation
We owe it to the families in our community, and ourselves, to always ask, “How do we continue to improve?”
Accreditation history
The HFA Accreditation process took shape in the very early days of HFA, during a time when the HFA network was growing rapidly.
During this expansion, HFA local and state level leaders were clear there needed to be a way for it to “truly mean something” when sites called themselves “Healthy Families”.
In response to the field, we partnered with the most highly regarded national experts on accreditation systems to put together HFA’s system of accreditation. The process continues to evolve over time, and HFA accreditation today is accomplished with pride and honor, demonstrating a site is providing high-quality home visiting services consistent with the high standards of the HFA model.
Accreditation is quite an achievement. Local sites and state systems often refer to Healthy Families America® (HFA) as the model with the most rigorous CQI process within the evidence-based home visiting landscape.
HFA accreditation is accomplished with pride and honor, demonstrating a site is providing high-quality home visiting services consistent with the high standards of the HFA model.
The accreditation process provides you with the opportunity to:
Focus on Continuous Quality Improvement
While it is an achievement to become accredited (and re-accredited), we see accreditation as a piece of the larger work around Continuous Quality Improvement.
The accreditation process provides you with the opportunity to:
Reflect on your work
Through the completion of a self-study, a site visit, and additionally, potential responses to the HFA National Office, HFA sites have a unique opportunity to reflect on everything from their policies to their practices and receive feedback from objective external reviewers.
Receive intensive support
While HFA sites always have their Training & Technical Assistance Specialists available to them, the accreditation process is a time when these national-level staff become even more involved with the happenings at the local level, as they provide support to help sites achieve accreditation.
Applying the expectation of Continuous Quality Improvement to ourselves (HFA Model and HFA National Office)
Continuing to evolve the Best Practice Standards
The HFA Best Practice Standards establish the expectations for the policies and practices of HFA sites around the world. Revisions come forward based on new insights from research as well as feedback from the field. When the Best Practice Standards are revised, it is a multi-year process that gathers feedback from network members all along the way.
We ask ourselves, “How can we continue to improve the way HFA families and sites experience the HFA model”?
Continuing to evolve our support
Through the accreditation process, and from other mechanisms of feedback (such as our HFA Advisory Committees) we are always learning about how the HFA model can be improved, and how our support can be improved. Over time, we’ve added additional support to what we offer the network, from Weekly Webinars to Supervisor Community of Practice (CoP’s), and more.
We ask ourselves, “What supports does our network need, and what can we provide to help them thrive?”
Continuing to evolve ourselves
In parallel with sites throughout the network, we strive to implement the same things we ask local sites to do. From standards around hiring to standards around equity, we think about how we apply these same standards to ourselves. The insights we gain from implementing the same Standards at the National Office help us do our work better, partner with humility, and remain aligned with the HFA Network.
We ask ourselves, “How do we continue to improve? Where might we have opportunities for further growth in ourselves as people, and as an organization?