Accreditation Information

All organizations that are seeking accreditation or re-accreditation need to complete the following core elements.

1. A Consultative Review of your overall policies and procedures.
2. An online Community Survey of organizations within your resource database. This is a new process and involves the surveying of 500 organizations within your resource database (or 100% of your resource database - whichever number is smaller). There is no minimum number of responses. The accrediting agency received and reviews the results but there is not a pass/fail element.
3. An online Resource Database Review.
4. A Call Review testing of your direct service, involving a series of 10 calls. The expectation is an 80% pass mark. Failure to achieve that leads to a second sequence of calls once the agency has had to time provide more coaching to their staff.
5. A Virtual Site Review.  This is only conducted once the above four elements are completed. It applies to all accreditations and is currently handled online.

The majority of the process involves a collaborative sequence of review and consultation. The agency works with AIRS staff to better understand the accreditation criteria and the requirements. All transactions between AIRS reviewers and the applicant agency, and all materials submitted by the agency, are confidential.

The cost is $6,000 for members and $9,000 for non-members. Accreditation awards are made for a period of five years.  An organization accrediting for the first time has 18 months to complete the process. An agency that is re-accrediting has 12 months to complete the process. Those who receive the discounted membership price are expected to maintain their membership for the full accreditation period.

Getting started:

• Fill out the online Accreditation Application Form 
• Print off the Accreditation Manual as a guide through the process