Hoover Senior Center achieves national accreditation

The Hoover Senior Center has joined more than 200 senior centers nationwide in achieving National Institute of Senior Centers (NISC) accreditation, which was announced on June 8.

The NISC is part of the National Council on Aging and has nine standards of excellence that senior centers must reach in order to be accredited. These criteria include above-average work in purpose and planning, community connections, governance, administration and human resources, program development and implementation, evaluation, fiscal and asset responsibility, facility operations and records and reporting.

Hoover Senior Center, located at 400 Municipal Drive, is the first in Alabama to receive accreditation.

“Becoming nationally endorsed will demonstrate that we care about our seniors and strive to go the extra mile for them,” Senior Center Manager Dana Stewart said via email.

Stewart said the path to accreditation started two years ago, when the Senior Center developed its mission and vision statement, including the goal to become “a model of excellence.” This raised the question of how excellence would be determined, and prompted interest from volunteers and staff in pursuing national recognition.

To meet the NISC’s standards of excellence, Stewart said the Senior Center’s accreditation committee had to answer a number of questions related to each standard’s topic. They also submitted a 10-pound manual to the NISC for review and recommended changes, which were then sent to peer reviewers throughout the country.

The NISC also toured the Hoover Senior Center on April 23-24 and met with the accreditation committee and volunteers and users of the center, prior to the vote to give the accreditation.

Stewart said the process helped the Senior Center put deliberate thought into the growth and future of the center. To maintain its NISC status, Stewart said the Senior Center will have to reapply every five years.

“Through this process, the staff has become more efficient and deliberate, specifically in the area of communication, service, programming, collaboration and safety,” Stewart said in an email to the Hoover Sun. “Accreditation assures our members that we focus on taking active steps toward the betterment of our overall center operations.”

The satisfaction surveys, interviews, assessments, focus groups and comment cards completed during the accreditation process will help the Senior Center better understand its members’ wishes and meet them, Stewart said.

“Our heart has always been to serve our members, but now we do it more purposefully,” she said.

In looking back to their goal of being “a model of excellence,” Stewart and other staff members said the Senior Center is achieving that through providing a welcoming environment, focused and responsive employees and volunteers and roughly 40 activities for members each week.

“We will never claim to be perfect, but we will strive to offer our very best that we can. We have a small staff and we lean heavily on our amazing volunteers as well as outside agencies to help us bridge the gaps in achieving this,” Stewart said.

The Senior Center will hold a ceremony on June 19 at 1. p.m. to celebrate its accreditation. Learn more about the Senior Center’s offerings at hooveralabama.gov/451/Seniors, and information about NISC accreditation is available at ncoa.org/national-institute-of-senior-centers.