Grandfather Home Receives National Award From JCAH

Grandfather Home for Children, Banner Elk, NC, is being named today as a 2006 recipient of a national award from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Only two behavioral health care centers in the United States will receive the honor. The formal presentation to Grandfather Home will be made in Chicago on November 16 at the Joint Commission’s national conference. The 10th Annual Ernest Amory Codman Award recognizes health care organizations for outstanding achievements in improving safety and quality of care. A panel of national experts in quality measurement and improvement chose the 2006 winners after onsite visits. Grandfather Home, a multi-service agency for abused children, was selected because of its expanded “continuum of care” program and its effective system for evaluating and improving its work.
The continuum concept has enlarged Grandfather Home’s ministry beyond the residential treatment campus in Banner Elk to community sites in five other areas of NC and TN. Satellites now exist around Asheville, Smoky, Northeast Tennessee, Winston-Salem and Gaston, with more than 25 counties participating.
The new program includes several stages of care, from emergency placement to permanent adoptions. It was developed to prevent the loss of progress often experienced by children as they leave one program and move to another. When Grandfather Home’s children complete a level of treatment, they no longer are discharged to other agencies. Instead, the continuum keeps them under the home’s umbrella and lets them move to a group home or foster care, always working toward a permanent family solution.
Named for the physician regarded in health care as “the father of results measurement,” The Ernest Amory Codman Award honors agencies that deliberately make changes when their studies show that new tactics are needed. For the continuum of care, Grandfather Home’s staff set up a system to check program effectiveness, and began to track success rates. Notable results from 1999 to 2005 showed a 300 percent increase in children served and a reduction of 42 per cent in their time stayed at the institution. There was a 900 per cent increase in accepting children closer to their home counties, and a 100 per cent reduction in the number of times a child was moved from one type of care to another.
Jim Swinkola, CEO of Grandfather Home for Children, commented on the agency’s Codman Award. “We are elated over this splendid recognition of the innovations we have made for the children in our care. Our staff has done all the hard work and deserves praise for their willingness to be on the cutting edge of behavioral health care. Our expanded work began as a direct result of staff suggestions and concerns. It took several years to implement, but it is having phenomenal results that enable us to serve many more children,” he said.
Grandfather Home for Children started as a Presbyterian orphanage in 1914. Its name came from the nearby and well-known Grandfather Mountain. The home’s ongoing mission of helping children in crisis has seen many changes in methods, as needs of children have changed. Today’s clientele are children who have been abused, suffer sexual behavior problems and/or show acute physical aggression.
Swinkola noted that Grandfather Home’s continuum of care, which is being recognized in the 2006 Codman Award, provides extra personal security for children who need it. “This plan greatly reduces the number of times a child must be uprooted and placed in new settings,” he said. “Hopefully, it is our children who will be the real winners.”
Founded in 1951, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, evaluates and accredits nearly 15,000 programs in the United States. It is the nation’s oldest and largest standards-setting body in its field.