Featured Team Members: Danny Frazer, BBA
We are proud to announce that the Association for Experiential Education (AEE) has renewed Open Sky’s Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare Accreditation. This accreditation is a symbol of our unending commitment to providing our students, families, and team members with the highest quality practices in the industry.
AEE has a long-standing reputation for accreditation of experiential and adventure programs. With the growth of the wilderness therapy industry, the Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare (OBH) Council partnered with AEE to develop an accreditation process for therapeutic programs. In 2014, Open Sky became the first organization to receive the OBH Accreditation. According to AEE, “[The OBH Accreditation] is solid evidence of an organization’s commitment to quality and safety, belief in professional standards, and allocation of resources toward continued excellence and improvement.”
At Open Sky, we are dedicated to meeting or exceeding the OBH standards, with the belief that focusing on risk management, accountability, and ethical practices directly lead to more effective therapy and lasting results. To attain accreditation, an organization must complete an internal review and pass an external evaluation conducted by an independent, third-party group of OBH professionals. The process is very comprehensive–everything is scrutinized, from how we log tire pressure to the way we orchestrate program and therapeutic activities. The process encourages us to analyze what we’re doing and continuously make improvements. It puts us through a deliberate process of self-inquiry, through which new ideas and new solutions emerge.
Our choice to become OBH accredited and renew that accreditation is just one way that Open Sky strives to be the premier family-centered wilderness therapy experience. Families and educational and healthcare professionals can be confident that we not only meet the minimum standards set by the states of Colorado and Utah, but that we meet or exceed the ethical, risk management, and treatment standards of preferred OBH industry practices.
We believe that in addition to benefiting Open Sky and the families we serve, accreditation also benefits the industry at large. It speaks to our true passion and love for what we do. The entire industry gains substantially through the collaboration of active creators, rather than passive participants, in the field of wilderness therapy.
December 12th, 2017