Rural Needs Assessment: In our professional social work practice we may encounter information that would suggest a community wide problem or concern. We can react to anecdotal data or personal experiences, before we critically analyze a problem, which may create a perception that a problem has wider reaching effects on a community than it really does. To effectively address rural social concerns it is important to accurately assess problems, social issues or concerns to assure that, often limited, resources are utilized effectively and efficiently.

In this paper you are to identify a social issue that is relevant to rural social work and use a variety of professional sources including the catchment group, key informants (community leaders, service providers) and the larger community to assess the unmet service provision and service access needs related to the issue. You will use the needs assessment data you collect to inform your Developing Rural Services paper.  You will find some specific information about needs assessments and a case example in Chapter 11 of Ginsberg. 

Use the following outline to organize your paper which should be about 6 pages with at least 5 professional references (this means academic journal articles and is in addition to the stakeholders you will speak with) and use correct APA style.  Use the rubric criteria for headings in your paper to keep yourself focused.

1. Identify a local social concern/issue/problem. Describe why you believe this issue is important and how it has led to unmet services or access to services.  What is the relevance to the profession of social work? 

2. Plan your needs assessment.

a. Identify Key Stakeholders – who will you collect data from?

b. Determine the purpose of the Needs Assessment

c. Identify the underlying theories/assumptions

d. Determine required resources to complete the needs assessment

e. Know the community – provide statistical data

f. Choose the type of assessment

3. Conduct a basic needs assessment and share your findings.  Do the people affected by the problem view the problem in the same way that you view the problem (See your answer to Question 1)?  How does this compare to the viewpoint of key informants and the community at large? What needs are not currently being met in underserved rural areas according to the data you have collected?

Please Note: In order to complete this assignment you will have to actually collect data from real people. So you should choose a topic and area that is accessible for you to complete data collection.