The Council on Accreditation (COA) partners with human service organizations worldwide to improve service delivery outcomes by developing, applying, and promoting accreditation standards.
COA's mission and values support persons served by:
Allowing the persons served to be partners in the planning of their own services; Meeting the needs and improving the functioning of persons served; Ensuring individualized service planning; and Encouraging culturally appropriate service delivery.

COA envisions excellence in the delivery of human services globally, resulting in the well-being of individuals, families, and communities.

COA’s Organizational values include:

• We believe in the inherent dignity, value and uniqueness of all people and that organizations are strengthened by a diversity of ethnicities, cultures and viewpoints.
• We believe that all persons, families and communities should receive human services that produce positive outcomes.
• We believe that persons, families and communities have a right and a responsibility to participate in all levels of decision-making that affect them.
• We believe that accreditation standards should be culturally responsive, evidence-based, innovative, realistic and conform to best practice principles.
• We believe that all our stakeholders should receive friendly, courteous, prompt and knowledgeable service

The Council on Accreditation (COA) is an independent, not-for-profit, international accreditor of the full array of social and behavioral healthcare services for children, youth, adults, seniors and families.COA was founded in 1977 by the Child Welfare League of America and Family Service America (now the Alliance for Children and Families). Originally known as an accrediting body for family and children’s agencies, COA currently accredits ??? over 40 different service areas and over 60 types of programs in the United States (US) and Canada. Among the service areas are substance abuse treatment, adult day care, services for the homeless, foster care, and inter-country adoption.

In 2007, COA accredited or was in the process of accrediting more than 1,800 private and public organizations that serve more that 7 million individuals and families in the United States, Canada, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, England and the Philippines. Currently, 34% of COA-accredited agencies have a budget of less than $2 million; the budget of another 44% is between $2 and $10 million.

In addition to standards for private social service and behavioral health care organizations, COA has developed separate business lines for public agencies, Canadian organizations, networks and lead management entities, and after school programs.

COA views After School recognition as a catalyst for change that builds on a program’s strengths and helps it achieve better results in all areas. The after school recognition process is designed to meet the needs of diverse programs--voluntary, public and proprietary, military, local and statewide, large and small. A program is evaluated against best-practice standards, which are developed using a consensus model with input from a wide range of service providers, funders, experts, policymakers and consumers.