Ayn's Multiple World

CARF IS PASSED?!!!

Good morning this is me. Rich has just checked in … he was checking on Mary’s coffee order. It’s funny because I was just thinking that I should give him a call. Great minds!

Mary’s the surveyor isn’t in this morning yet, but we told Sister a few moments ago that she’s going to try being at Chapel in 20 minutes. I hope she follows through. Sister looked happy to here she might be there. It would be a good chance for Mary to experience our clients. One of the lower functioning will be receiving communion this morning so it should be a specially nice service.

We’re up to day 3 of our survey and it seems to be going really well. Mary is a very, very nice person AND a good surveyor. It’s been really enjoyable talking to her. She’s been in the space right next to or in-between Rich and us. The Leadership group has been in the last few days though so Rich has been camping out in the staff dining room. It’s been so pleasant and comfortable having her here.

Besides the part of understanding CARF SOOO well and having someone to talk to about it, she’s been just like a friend in that we’ve talked about things more personal. I really have fallen for her big time. I hadn’t remembered her from before, but as soon as I saw her warm face, I knew everything was going to be ok.
I brought in with me today one of the quilts from the stash CS sent home. I checked with her and she said of course – please do, but in general I’m bringing it to give to Mary … I’m hoping she can take it – kind of under the table, because I know they aren’t supposed to receive gifts. It’s just that I think she might be lonely or in need of the same kind of things we were in being able to create enthusiastically. I found she used to sew everything like the kids clothes. Well, you can imagine where I might go with that. I hope this gives her a good start and maybe she can share the quilting world with us. It wouldn’t take too much in materials so that she’d be ready. I’d like it if we could become friends after this is all after it be so cool if for example she wanted to be a Moose sister.

I’d have so much fun with that. We’ll also tell her about the quilting bloggers.

It be nice if she knew there was a much bigger sisterhood to be a part of. She reads a lot, but I’m thinking MAYBE there’s a small squeaker of a space she could do this other too. It’s made US so happy! Plus, she’s a kitty person … that’s like a cool part enough to think she’d be a natural as to the group. She’s higher intellectually and probably in lifestyle, but that could be something that we could all live with. We’ll see too early to tell now, but it be very nice 

It’s about 5 minutes to now … I think Rich is going to be coming in in a few moments as well. I sure hope today goes well. It seems to be a good start … it’s rainy and wet outside and we turned on Corrine Bailey Rae. She seems to be my favorite for this type of weather. The only thing better would be to be home under a warm blanket and a book. Well, maybe a sewing book … we’d like to be in the sewing room quite naturally. Ahh that be the good stuff. We didn’t get too far last night … we watched a silly movie – Cheaper by the dozen part 2. It was just low brain thinking kind of stuff. Then we went to the computer thinking that we were going to finish our posting from the other day, but we got involved in a communication with CS and then we were like feeling tired. After a little we said night and went into the sewing room, but by then Rich was about ready to pop in the door. I think we might have fallen asleep relatively early. I’m not sure if it were with him or by ourselves, but the tucking in part led to other forms of happiness. He’s my dream cake 

During CS conversation we had to go through the changing of the fabric over to the bricks rather than plastic bags. She’s worrying about natural stuff like keeping the fabric clean and animal free of whatever animals could do to fabric. I think we passed the tests of we’ll try it and see how it goes. Pswhoo. Tough audience!

We talked about another thing too – and by talking I mean I respond to her posts while she’s responding to mine … and eventually we catch up in real time. But, she says that we should call it a sewing studio rather than a sewing room. I guess we are dating ourselves. I looked up studio and I looked up room and she’s right … studio is a place for creating some measure of art. I think sewing fits into that medium when doing it artistically like for quilts. So now we gotta retrain ourselves *sigh*

Hmm, Rich is in … he showed us the Certificate he was missing saying that we were all current. Good good … it’s partially his fault for not checking on it previously, but again it’s part their fault for not sending it automatically. He was zinged with sister a bit, but she’s pretty patient now days. Just so we have the thing. It allows us to pay minimum wage to the workers or something … Just another work thing.

I have to say that I’ve been more pro-CARF than I had been lately after talking to Mary. I really do believe that it’s a good thing for the agency. She’s helping us with the books so maybe we can keep caught up a little better even with the expense. I think she talked to Sr. a little about staying with CARF. Sister is still considering, but at this point, I’d be willing to do more with it. I really have loved CARF, but worry about the time.

Mary is going to have a meeting with Sister at 9:30 am after church. I think that both should be looking forward to that. There were certain things like financial and personnel that are sister’s babies. I think she was wondering why Mary hadn’t talked to her yet. Sr. has been relieved though so that I can see her face becoming drained and then to the point of letting go. Yesterday Rich argued a point against doing strategy reports, but I knew that Mary was right and that Rich was just arguing, I ended it by saying that Mary will just talk to Sister and we’ll know from there where to go.

It turned out Sister was ok with doing it, but as we had thought she’d let it go because of no money. It will be a recommendation and I think it will be a good one. Everyone should have a strategy otherwise how would we know which direction to go. Afterward Mary let out some steam after the session with Rich, and then after that Rich let out some steam on me for not agreeing with him and arguing against his points in front of someone. Yeah but … I thought … Rich you are wrong – why aren’t you dropping it. I felt I had to represent a more flexible St. Rose.

Pswhoo. Hopefully that kind of thing won’t happen today. I think it’s good that she meets our clients at chapel and sees staff there too.

Yesterday we invited her to staff training … I don’t think she stayed very long, but she had an idea of it. I wish I could break in the exercise more smoothly, but we got into the evaluation and I thought it was a very valid conversation to have with the staff. They seemed to appreciate being able to talk of both the good things going on here and the not so good parts. I had copied three different versions of the serenity prayer in saying basically that we choose our battles.

The staff really got carried into a part of client independence and somehow they related that to client odors. I thought that was interesting. Didn’t see it coming, but we’re going to have to work a little harder with that. For some it might mean letting them do some deodorant like things here at the center and for the father who has a problem with it and his daughter … It’s just going to take more convincing. Staff really seemed to be having a hard time and was relating it to neglect, where I knew with this particular family it was more a matter of their own understanding how those kind of principles work. We’ll see … we’ve been doing this battle before … just gotta keep working it through. To some degree the problem with it falls on the girl, because if people are keeping distant from her because of her smells then something is going wrong and has to be corrected.

We’re all back. Mary and the groups are back from chapel as is Robyn who’s back to the computer work. I had gone to the washroom and ran into Rich. He said that Chris had another seizure. This was the second one this week and the second time he was taken to the emergency room. Rich is pretty uptight right now. I don’t know if he has figured out how to help. Chris called him so that was good and Rich is thinking of calling the Epilepsy Foundation … ahh there we checked out their website. It had lists of groups for people to get involved … that be good for Chris … but for now he can’t drive and has to be driven. I really feel for the family because there’s so much to worry over. I asked Rich if he was going, but he said no not at this point, but maybe soon. I think he had dinner with Chris last night … I’m pretty sure they talked about all this.

Just this seizure is new.

I would like to be working on something work oriented, but today is a bad day for concentration. By now Mary is meeting with sister, we just opened the window and feel wedged between Robyn and the surveyor in that they are on either side and I’m answering questions both might have. Not much, but the point is that I want to be available. I’d kind of like to take a look at the 2009 books that Mary got for us, but she’ll be sending out the 2010 books and I’d rather start from there. I would like to I believe go back to the outlook calendar and start keeping appointments and such. I’m not sure if the program is ok, or had crashed. I’m hoping for the better. There are a few things I’d like to clear off my desk. I have no idea what the normal schedule for me is without worrying about an immediate CARF survey.

It’s that time where you think … ok, this time I want to do everything right. She gave me a list of operational time lines so that will help. Good thing to be making deadlines.

Rich can be very business-like and he wants to contribute to the report writing. I sure hope sister gives us some room with that. I can do the gathering of data, but I want not to be the only one responsible for CARF.

Hmm, this has been kind of cool … I’ve been looking at the operational time line.

I’m going to assume the best time to start the time line is just after a CARF Interview. I really am going to need adding it to the Outlook somehow. I will look forward to getting back there. The activities are listed by the related standard, the date of the last occurrence and document source … basically after you perform the operation then it has to be recorded somewhere. Mary is saying that everything should be on a thumb drive where we can transfer electronically the data to someone coming in to do the survey. I like that idea a lot. I of course save to my thumb drive, but I haven’t been efficient enough because when Rich and I went back over documents there were things we didn’t find.

It would really be good for me if I was doing this well if another administrator was to come to St. Rose Center. I’d like to be this invested in the business.

Having Mary here is like a breath of fresh air. She wants to see all the things I would like to be a part of. It will feel soooo good not to have things on my back as to not being done or efficient. Part of it will be working with Rich. That will secure his position better as well. I’d like to have regular CARF meetings with him – of course with Sr. too if she’d like to be there. I sure hope she doesn’t give up on CARF. I’d like to have regular meetings with Sister though where we would do stuff like writing out a succession plan or review governance policies. Because these things aren’t always done equivalently it messes up having a system.

I enjoy thinking of CARF again. I’d like to be more business orientated … it would give me a more secure foundation if something were to happen as to a change with St. Rose Center. It also give Sr. something to talk about during the admin, governance and advisory board meetings. Just we’d be a little more professional.

I just gotta find out when the 2010 manual is coming out to see which related standards to plug into.

Thinking now how is it best to format these in outlook. Hmm, do I have an outlook on my little computer?

Oh man oh man … we PASSED WE PASSED!!!

It’s almost time to go so we’re on our way … just wanted to say she was soooo nice I kept waiting for something bad to happen, but it never did. She said a lot of good stuff about the work that was done and about things she really liked. I think Sr. and Rich were relieved too. There is one funny thing that happened. She finished the survey without saying we had any negatives, and then sister asked for one and then the surveyor asked sister what hers was. After that when pushed again the surveyor said she had one more bad thing … the only thing she could say? Rich was argumentative with her. YEEKS! Is he going to hear about that for three years??

posted by Ann Marie @ 5/07/2010 01:48:00 PM Comments: 0