SeniorCenter Certification Site Visit Timeframe

Time / Activity
9:00 a.m. / Site team visit begins. After introductions the team leader reviews the day’s agenda with the director and the team, including schedule, or any volunteers or others that wish to meet with the team. *
Tour of the facility (20 minutes or less, please) and satellites, if applicable. Arrangements to visit satellites should be made before the site team arrives. Visiting satellites may lengthen the site visit to more than a day.
The team meets alone to compare finding from the preliminary reading of the SCOPE tool and divide the SCOPE tool into sections for review.
9:30 a.m. / Review of documentation materials begins. During this time, team members may need to move around the center to conduct other site visit activities as listed in the SCOPE tool. Additionally, team members may need to meet with the director, or designated staff person to ask questions or request information as needed.
12:00 noon (or as convenient) / Lunch. Please discuss this with Leslee Breen prior to visit.
1:00 p.m. / Continue documentation review.
Site team scores the SCOPE tool and compiles a list of comments.
Meet with the director to advise him/her of findings and result of visit. Give the director an opportunity to provide any additional comments or information.
4:30 p.m. / Site team leaves the center if work is completed. If, by mid-afternoon, it is apparent that the review will go past 4:30 p.m., the site visit team and the center director will decide whether to work later or plan for the site team to return the next morning.
* It is helpful for the team to meet with a variety of people involved in the center, but this must be balanced with other time demands of the team. It is often convenient for such visits to occur informally during lunch; but they also might be scheduled within a 20- to 30- minute period during the morning. Please let Leslee Breen know immediately if such interviews are scheduled.

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WHAT THE SITETEAM WILL NEED FROM THE CENTER

  • A private, quiet workspace with a table for reviewing documentation
  • Adherence to the schedule
  • A guided tour of the facility
  • The director’s time at the beginning and end of the day and periodically for questions during the day
  • Copies of documentation materials arranged in a clear and orderly manner labeled to indicate the question(s) they support. Please be very explicit about why the documentation answers the question. Remember that outsiders on the team do not know your community, so what may be obvious to you may not be clear to them. Include only enough documentation to answer the question.
  • Freedom to move around the center and talk to staff members, volunteers, participants and others at the team’s discretion
  • If applicable, in advance of the team’s visit, please tell the center’s participants to not wait around for the results of the visit, as there is no guarantee about the time the team will finish.

WHAT THE CENTER CAN EXPECT FROM THE SITE VISITORS

  • Informality. We will dress casually and come expecting to work and learn.
  • Preparation. We will have read and completed a preliminary scoring of all sections for which material has been provided. We will have identified any questions before arriving.
  • Flexibility. We will try to work around the center’s schedule and convenience as much as possible. We will also be open to different ways of achieving a given standard and documenting it. The team is visiting to confirm the center’s self-assessment according to the SCOPE standards; it is neither there as a monitor nor an adversary.
  • Confidentiality and Disclosure. We will respect the confidentiality of any personnel or client information we review.

Updated November 1, 2013