Transcript Taking Community Needs Assessment to a New Level

Iowa Community Action Association
Janet Carl, Facilitator
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Authorizing legislation
Richer information
First step in ROMA planning cycle
Gain new partnerships/resources
Clearly link needs to strategies
“The plan has always been to use these
[statewide surveys] as starting points in the
needs assessment process…. With that said,
these surveys are designed to identify, for
each agency, the ‘general’ areas of needs in
the state and in each of the agencies’ service
area. Agencies should then create their own
agency-specific, need-specific surveys based
on the information from these surveys. ”
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“A Community Action Guide to
Comprehensive Community Needs
Assessment”
www.nascsp.org
Barbara Mooney, EdD
Margaret Power, PhD
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--New attitude, skill or knowledge or
changed reality, increased capacity
--Individual, agency, community levels of
outcomes
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Agree on a new/expanded approach
Define community, needs, assets
Create assessment plan
Create data collection plan
Implement plan
Analyze data; report and interpret findings
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1.geographical boundaries
2. overlapping political authorities
3. populations with common characteristics,
interests
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Needs: categorize them
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Assets: tangible and intangible
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Assessment Coordinator
Agency/board team
What are the 2-6 questions you’d really like the
answers to?
--economic and social trends
--effect of family trends (e.g., divorce,
educational level) on employment, security
and well being
--future employment opportunities
--particular populations
What Data
Who or what has it?
How is it collected?
•Data profile of county
residents: age,
income, employment
status, health status,
family structure,
education level
•Income support
program participation
• Census, American
Community Survey
•State census data
survey (IA counties
book)
•State Public Health
•State Education
•State Human Services
•CAA database
•Extracts of databases
in electronic format;
may have to be
requested
•Analysis of agency
client database
statistics
•Interviews with
former CAA
participants
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Implement data collection plan
Analyze data and report
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What target population are you particularly
interested in?
What specifically do you want to know about
this population in terms of both needs and
assets?
What specifically do you want to know about
community and agency capacity to address
this group’s needs?
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Where did you find data already existing?
What other data did you gather?
Lessons learned from your needs assessment
process
Databases
Public—census, state departments, counties,
towns, chambers of commerce
Private—CAA—agency and state numbers
including NPI reports, Head Start data, CSBG
1. Staff suggest questions
 2. Inquire about assets
 3. Don’t re-invent the wheel
www.communityaction.org
 4. Not a customer satisfaction measurement
 5. Skip the jargon
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Re-write: What do you think is the main cause
of poverty in our community?
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Focus groups
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Community Forums
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Interviews
1. Avoid pages of raw data
2. Compare data from different times, places
and groups—relate to your framework
3. Organize into sections by framework
4. Test conclusions
5. Different reports, different stakeholders
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Director of Community Development &
Planning, Missouri Valley Community Action
Agency
How has your recent needs assessment
allowed your agency to seek new partners
and new funding?