Feedback from The Child and Youth Care Association of Alberta (CYCAA)

  • The process of accreditation of CYC education programs was viewed as positive by all members in that it helps clarify expectations around standards necessary for CYC practice.
  • Current certification programs need to be respected and valued. In Alberta, people can become certified without CYC specific education if they have worked in the field for one year, have supervisor endorsement and pass a comprehensive written and oral exam. Those with CYC education are also expected to meet the one year work experience requirement, have supervisor endorsement and pass the oral exam. Their education exempts them from the written. This was designed to help ensure that all certified workers meet a minimum standard of practice.
  • Flexibility is essential to allow regional concerns and demands. Some programs may devote more time to a particular area based on current needs. Some thought the outline was limiting and too prescriptive and thus may hinder opportunity for flexibility, for example in the breakdown of course hours. I know that the proposal assures us that this will be the case, but I do have fears that there is a tendency for standards to take on a life of their own and to lose track of the overall purpose of the accreditation process
  • Self management and regulation is important to encourage standards and competencies. The penalty for not following through is not fully clear. What are the possible consequences to programs if they do not meet the standard?
  • The process needs to be slow and have opportunity for ongoing feedback from all involved parties such as instructors, students, and community.
  • The CYCAA would like to remain involved in the process and receive updates on progress.

Feedback from MacEwanUniversity

  • A point specific to MacEwan is that our diploma and degree grads currently require only 35% residency credits to graduate with our diploma or degree, not 50% as proposed in the accreditation standards. This is unusual and was given special approval by the college. The reason is to insure thesmoothest possible transfer for incoming CYC diploma students. Basically, this amount insures that they can receive 60 credits for their core CYC diploma courses (provided that they are assessed as equivalent to ours), but also receive some credit for additional UT A & S electives. For Ontario students who have completed a three year diploma and for students who perhaps were in general studies prior to the diploma this is very helpful and insures that they maximize past education.
  • I am also wondering about the feasibility of the type of in-depth follow-up suggested with graduates. As you know, it is often difficult to maintain current contact information on students in the program, let alone for past grads. For graduate studies information this is easier as they typically need to approach us for references. As well, certification info is public and easily obtained. However, those in the field move frequently and often are very difficult to find. I suspect that samples of those we can find will be skewed as we will miss those who have left the field. Anyway, I guess that bridge will be crossed in due time.
  • Overall, I think that the process looks thorough and quite "doable." For us, here is a significant amount of overlap with other processes already in place (ex. Quality Council accreditation.
  • The need for a clear CYC identity is useful. Practitioner experience is a good criteria, but it is left vague at this point.
  • I suggest accreditation be for 8 years rather than 5.

Feedback from Alberta Consortium Group

  • The accreditation task force is now entering a short consultation phase to ensure that we have professional associations and educators on board with the above noted proposal (see attachments) before moving forward to actually pilot the proposal, approve the proposal (target for approval is May 2010 at the next national conference) and then create a body that would undertake the accreditation processes.
  • In the proposal for Educational Accreditation document it states:

“most organizations move from program to process to outcome standards. It is a natural progression and agencies or schools can stop at the end of each step and decide how and when to proceed further. Moving directly to outcome standards can be daunting even to the most sophisticated program”.

Based on that information, and playing devils advocate, we were just wondering if there was a rational behind going straight to an outcomes based model. To clarify, we do advocate for an outcome standards model (which seems more comprehensive and useful), but wonder if their would be any benefit in exploring program and or process standards as a starting point?

  • A couple of comments/thoughts on the Outcomes Assessment Accreditation Model document:

-Under 7.1 (program inputs) we were wondering how “general outcomes” would be decided on. Our program has adapted our program wide learning outcomes based on Carol’s research (Professionalism, Self, Communication, Knowledge and Theory, Assessment and Intervention). Will there be “flexibility” in determining a program’s general outcomes, or will there be a movement to have nation wide general outcomes.

-Closely associated with the previous comment, under 7.2 (Competency identification) we are wondering if there will be flexibility for individual programs to determine what and how those competencies are delivered. For example, I assume that all programs within Alberta have the study of “ethics” within their curriculum.Medicine HatCollege utilizes the CYCAA code of ethics (and assume others do as well), and in addition we also look at FICE and other approaches to ethical practice. We appreciate the ability to have flexibility in how we deliver the “general outcome” of ethics and professionalism. Will accreditation still provide this diversity in curriculum among the colleges?

-Under outcome measures (7.12-7.15 in particular), we thought you should know that Medicine HatCollege does not collect this information, based on the fact that we are brokered through MRC. In our program review we do collect graduate satisfaction data (7.12), but do not follow up with employment (7.13), job advancement (7.14), or employer satisfaction (7.15). Having said that, I don’t see any obstacles to prevent us from starting to collect that information (I’ll present it to our Dean).

-Finally, another devil’s advocate comment on some of the “Outcome Measures”. We think that it is important to consider that several graduates do not go straight into the work force. The majority do, but occasionally a graduate will choose to start a family, work part time in the field, choose to work outside of the field, go into a different discipline of study, etc. Might this skew some of the results for outcome measures?

  • How locked into this model do we become if we approve it? do we believe the domains as outlined here fit the needs of our community, students and program? I would suggest we may want to look at the results of the research being done on Alberta agency needs before we can buy into this. If this doesn't fit within the time line of approving this nationally next May - so be it.