On April 20, Jewish Family Service learned that it had earned a three-year accreditation from CARF International. “CARF International accreditation is the gold standard of approval for organizations like ours,” said Liz Vogel, JFS’s CEO. CARF, the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities, is an internationally recognized nonprofit organization that provides accreditation for health and human services. Accreditation indicates that a provider meets international quality standards with a focus on person-centered care.

“It's an amazing accomplishment to be awarded the full three years as a first-time applicant,” said Vogel. “It took incredible diligence, professionalism, and flexibility on the part of our team.”

This accreditation represents the highest level that can be given to an organization and shows the organization’s alignment with CARF standards. It means JFS has gone through a rigorous peer-review process, including a team of surveyors who came for an onsite visit. The approval covers case management services for adults and older adults, and mental health counseling for all ages. 

1,627 Standards Met



“It may be hard for people outside of our area to understand the level of this accomplishment. This accreditation took us two and a half years,” said Vogel. “The surveyors from CARF judged us on 1,627 standards.” Despite the enormity of the effort, Vogel said this work was important. “If there is a high standard that can show the work that JFS does, then I want to meet that standard. We took on this challenge in part because we needed accreditation to continue to take Medicaid.”

Marliza Baines, JFS’s Quality Improvement & Assurance Manager, who spearheaded the process, shared how it happened. “The two surveyors went down each and every one of [the 1,627 standards] and said, show me this, show me that. We had five people in the room those [two] days, all finding and showing them things. It was intense.” Baines’s experience in getting JFS Medicaid approval, itself quite difficult, helped her in this new mission.

The Day the Decision Letter Came

This was JFS’s first time going through the process, and the team didn’t know if they would get a letter that said “yes, “yes for just one year,” or “no.” “We got the letter on the nineteenth of April,” recounts Baines. “And I couldn't read it until the twentieth, I was too nervous. It had never occurred to me, in my excellent mind, that we could ever get anything less than three years. But after the surveyors left it became a possibility, because the surveyors kept saying ‘oh, you could get one or three years or, there is a possibility that you could get none.’

“I took a seat after my morning meeting on the 20th, I told myself, ‘I'm going to open this up, and it said ‘congratulations’ and ‘three year accreditation.” Asked what happened next, she said, “Then I ran down the hall and showed everybody. It was unknown, unmarked territory. It was hard for everyone, people were doing two jobs: still giving exemplary service, while and doing this. We should be proud. We did it.”

Asked if JFS had made any mistakes, Baines said, the surveyors indicated the opposite. One of the surveyors even told her, about a specific process, “I'm going to take that back with me. I want to implement this.”

Shooting for the Stars

Asked how she would summarize this accomplishment for the community, Baines said, “It is proof that we provide rigorously excellent services that the community deserves.”

Asked how she would summarize it for her team, Baines smiled broadly. “Well, we shot for the stars and we made it.”