Draft Plan for Needs Assessment Forum

NEEDS ASSESSMENTS

Why:
A. It will be invaluable for grant writing,
B. and for affirmation to the press, when groups talk about needs.
C. More important to our work on the Community Council is that it will be a learning tool for students and teachers, which they can use in classroom discussion about our local community,
D. and in making selections for the student projects.

Who will do it: It should be a plan the
A. students can implement with the advice and encouragement of adults. (I have done many of this type assessments over the years and will be glad to work with students on all aspects of it.,
B. Hopefully others on the committee with also be willing to help.
C. We will be inviting Lynn Hobbs, local resident and a nationally known expert in this field to advise when we get down to the actual process of writing the questions and training the students to be interviewers/facilitators.

When:
A. During January and February the entire Council and others
1. should begin to develop the lists of people to invite,
2. select who will be the inviter(s) It should be someone respected and influential in the eyes of the invitees.
3. recruit the students (and others if needed) who will be the interviewers in the first session, the focus group facilitators in the second sessions.
B..During March, all questions should be carefully formulated for both the interview sessions and the focus group session.
C. Late April is a great time to get people together for this sort of thing. It is lighter at night, weather is OK to bring people out
D. Two nights (each a week apart) would fit the model done in Chelan County.
How
The first night is for individual interviews, of experts in the fields, (this should also include peripheral experfs such as judges, law enforcement, public agency leaders, etc) conducted at the school. (Each student leader could do several interviews in an evening,)
2. The questions:
a. The questions include asking about needs in their own field (where they are working on the need but unable to meet it);
b. totally unmet needs in their own field (where there is no services available at all),
c. other unmet needs they see in the community (outside their own field)
d. what do they see as the most pressing need (or the three most pressing) in their own field.
e. what do they see as the three most pressing needs for the whole community
The second night is in focus groups, (the expertise of the people in each group is carefully balanced prior to the night, so groups are preassigned to a group that should not be weighted by any particular area (arts, environment, human service, etc). People invited to the focus groups include many of the same as in the interviews, but also a specialized list (meaning carefully selected to be people in the know about the target areas). It might include for each field:
a. experts for each field
b. peripheral experts (collaborators) for each field
c. activists/volunteers, for each field, and
d. consumers for each field.
3. The second night questions would also be about needs: (I believe that the results of the first group of interviews may have been available for the people in the second group, but am not entirely sure.
Using flip charts for results, groups brainstorm
a. What do they think are the needs in their own area of interest?
b. Individually write What do they think are the 3 most pressing needs for the entire community?
The needs are then tabulated, the focus group divides into two's or threes and they must come up with agreement on
what are the 3 most pressing needs between them.
Results
E. The final document is a tabulation of the needs as prioritized (In Chelan County they reported both groups results, we can make that decision as we go.)
Who to invite to participate:
F. Areas of inquiry:
Animals,
Arts,
Children &Youth (include child care, prevention and intervention and youth leadership programs)
Economic Development,
Education (include preschool through higher ed),
Environment (might include natural resources, planning, wildlife),
Health and Safety (include Mental Health and Drug Alcohol here or in Human Services?)
Historical and Cultural
Human Services for Families (include Domestic Violence, prevention, law enforcement, courts,)
Seniors,