Understanding citizen needs is a critical step required for the effective planning of social services, the design of public policy and prioritisation of investment decisions. Even though there are specialist research centres or government agencies in charge of specific domain areas, it is challenging to have a commanding oversight of all information relevant to a social issue.
This 2.5-hour workshop will touch on the basics of how to arrive a coherent overview of the needs and gaps of a particular client type or social issue (e.g. disability, animal welfare, ex-offenders etc.). We will touch on steps like needs assessment, asset mapping, determining gaps and understanding their causes, and identifying potential solutions; however, our focus will be on how to make sense of the types of information from a diversity of sources and arrive at a coherent landscape that can inform programme, organisational or even sector-level planning.
Questions we will cover:
- How do you determine the needs for the target population or issue you care about?
- How do you map out the existing policies, services and community assets that address those needs?
- How do you determine the gaps and their causes?
- How do you start collecting information about possible solutions?
- How do you prioritise across diverse possible needs and even across social issues and causes?
This course does not cover the data collection tools—surveys, interviews, focus groups, stakeholder engagement etc.—that administrators and researchers may have to be familiar with to engage in needs assessments. It is suitable for social service agencies, research centres, policymakers and grantmakers interested to rationalise their portfolio of programmes and investments.
*Note: Prior registration is required and a registration fee applies for this workshop.