Karis Receives FOCUS Reaccreditation and an Inaugural Award

As you may know, Karis Disability Services has been in the process of seeking re-accreditation with one of our accrediting partners, FOCUS Accreditation. This process has included a lot of steps and pieces, including:

• Sharing more than 1,200 documents as evidence of having met 158 different standards across 17 domains;
• Hosting 19 virtual interviews with different Karis leaders, and 1 meeting with the Our Voices Matter leadership council;
• Collecting responses from 548 online surveys completed by different interested parties;
• Reviewing 116 files of people using services, volunteers, employees and board members;
• Hosting 39 onsite visits across Ontario and Saskatchewan

Throughout this process, there have been many who have contributed to the review, including members of the QRPI department, district leadership and support teams, different leaders identified as FOCUS Domain Leads, and members of the FOCUS Accreditation Champions team. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this work!

We are excited to announce that FOCUS has awarded Karis Disability Services another four-year re-accreditation, from July 2025 – July 2029. In addition, Karis will be receiving a new 2025 “100% Excellence Award” presented to organizations that achieve a perfect score in their accreditation review, and an inaugural “Leadership in Excellence Award”, recognizing organizations that have been accredited for four consecutive cycles as of 2025.

As part of this announcement, Cheryl Whiteman, CEO of FOCUS Accreditation commended Karis Disability Services for its exceptional dedication to undergoing evaluation by a third party and shared that she is honoured to have Karis champion the inaugural Leadership in Excellence Award, recognizing their unwavering commitment to quality assurance year after year. She acknowledged that Karis ensures that robust quality controls remain in place, keeping the needs of people at the forefront of their organization.

While we know that there is more work to be done to continue to maintain and improve quality, we are excited to celebrate this great news with all of you.

At this time, we ask that you do not share this news with people outside of Karis Disability Services. We will be planning a public announcement at our Annual Community Meetings on September 20th, and we look forward to celebrating with our other interested parties at that time.

Justin Radstake, Manager of Quality Assurance