 Woddy Bernas, Program Director Today, as our field takes its place among the other behavioral and mental health disciplines, we are now being held to the same level of accountability as is expected of them. And, in my
opinion, rightly so. As I recently heard a college professor say, “You can change the world...
but unless you know what you’re doing, please don’t!”
Professional organizations, licensing agencies, legal bodies, clients, family members, and other stakeholders demand evidence of ethical,
professional, and effective delivery of services. Accrediting and licensing groups such as The Commission for the Accreditation of
Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) have developed standards of best practice for all levels of a treatment organization including business
practices, clinical program standards, employment, and community services. These standards include the expectation to collect objective
evidence of program effectiveness and efficient delivery of quality services.
Gray Wolf Ranch was created to be an outstanding program from the very beginning. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that we have
met CARF standards of practice and have been awarded consecutive three-year accreditations since the very beginning. Still, we continually
strive to make our programs even better. An area that we slated for improvement a couple of years ago was Outcomes Data Collection.
There was already a rudimentary system in place; however, it clearly did not offer hope for collecting much meaningful or useful information
beyond a few “customer satisfaction” questions (which, incidentally, consistently gave us ratings in the Very Good to Excellent categories).
Since then we have significantly expanded our scope of information collection. In January of 2007, we began collecting information from
our residents at admission, discharge, and sixty days after discharge. We are asking many more questions to learn about such things
as drugs of choice; overall effectiveness of the program; value of the wilderness trek experience; how well we prepared residents for
abstinence; effectiveness of individual and group counseling; and helpfulness of the level of structure of the program, to name a few.
We have just recently begun to ask for feedback from parents and family members to see how well we serve them in the difficult task of
deciding on a continuing care placement for their son and their ongoing involvement with us once their son is here. We will be doing the
same soon with the professional agencies and individual referents who recommend our program to their clients.
We are confident that we do a very good job at Gray Wolf. However, there is always room for growth. We plan to use this information
to guide us as we evaluate the services we offer and to identify needed areas for change or improvement.
Whether you have been asked to participate in a survey or not, I invite your feedback anytime. You are welcome to phone or e-mail me
(woody@graywolfranch.com) and I will be glad to discuss your concerns or recommendations.
Woody Bernas, Program Director
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