complete 2 discussion responses for social work course

RESPOND WITH AT LEAST 300 WORDS EACH…CITE ONLY PEER REVIEWED SOURCES

POST 1:

Based off my professional experience volunteering in a domestic abuse shelter I chose to do a needs assessment. This was a shelter dedicated to helping and sheltering battered women and men with a limit of 20 clients at a time, who could not stay in their house because of the abuse. Based off an assessment that was done before the client entered the shelter, we figured out what each client needed help with specifically. Each week the entire staff would get together for a meeting to discuss each client and tried to work out what their needs still were.

During my employment in the shelter, the most common need of each client was a new place to live. Most clients could not go back to their residents because of restraining orders, or divorces. Currently the prices of houses are expensive where the shelter is, so it was sometimes a task trying to find clients somewhere descent to live. Many of the clients would end up back in their homes where the abuse happened because it was too expensive for them to live on their own.

Therefore, it would be important to do a needs assessment for the community for another type of shelter or haven for clients who couldn’t afford to live on their own or are waiting to have enough money to get one. According to Grinnell, Gabor & Unrau (2016), a needs assessment is a systematic process for determining and addressing needs, or “gaps” between current conditions and desired conditions or “wants”. The discrepancy between the current condition and wanted condition must be measured to appropriately identify the need. Some questions I might ask would be, do you feel that another shelter is necessary? What types of services would you like to see inside the shelter? Do you think that there needs to be a better open-door policy in the shelter? I would use a questionnaire by going out in the community and asking residents to help with the questions. We would then analyze all the data and show the results to the major to help get funding for a new shelter. Showing the need for a new shelter and how so many of the clients are turned away or go back to abusive homes would be important to our case. Also showing how much the community would be behind the idea would be beneficial.

References:

Grinnell, R. M., Jr., Gabor, P. A., & Unrau, Y. A. (2016). Program evaluation for social workers: Foundations of evidence-based programs (7th ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

POST 2:

Based off my professional experience, I chose to apply the needs assessment. According to the website, Needs, or gaps in results, are the foundation of decisions in most professions and settings (physicians in emergency rooms to managers in office buildings). Needs define the results we want to accomplish in relation to our current achievements, and we define them either formally or informally on a daily basis. The assessment of needs is therefore done by improving performance (or closing gaps in results) in a variety of contexts. Needs Assessments are used to identify strategic priorities, define results to be accomplished, guide decisions related to appropriate actions to be taken, establish evaluation criteria for making judgments of success, and inform the continual improvement of activities within organizations. Thus, from training to systems engineering,Needs Assessments play an active role in the accomplishment of individual, team, organizational, and even societal results ().

Based off my professional experience, my old supervisor used a needs assessment when critiquing what she felt needed to improve. Although I may not have necessarily agreed with all of the feedback given, I did still feel as if some of it or the other half of it was just to help me as well as the business improve . The goal of the business was to ensure each student was not only treated like a student, but also taught the ability to learn, practice professionalism, and succeed. Therefore, through the assistance of these assessments helped us reach that goal. The goal was reached because the needs that we were unable to recognize were revealed through the assessment ().

A need assessment aims at identifying a problem (). A needs assessment is conducted before establishing any new program. However, a needs assessment can generate data that are used to aid planning efforts at all stages of an existing program’s development. A program’s development includes, start-up, expansion, renovation, or closure of particular “components” within a program. A needs assessment for an existing program is particularly helpful when there’s a poor fit between client needs and existing services. In reference to a text, an individual must be considerable of the fact that what is “needed” is relative and depends on one’s vantage point. Also, needs assessment comes about from some action or activity. It is not something that can be produced without someone or, more usually, many people involved. Second, needs assessments provide estimates or sophisticated guesses about perceived needs. In reference to the research questions, I would incorporate the framework the text suggest. Self Actualization, Ego Needs, Social Needs, Security Needs, and psychological needs (). Self-Actualization would be used to re-create family traditions and rituals. Ego needs would be used to find new employment and housing. Social needs would be used to reunite evacuees with family members. Security needs would be used on behalf of fears of physical danger and food deprivation. Pyshcological needs are used to evacuate to locations with clean water, food, and shelter. To gather data, I would use the four indicators of a social problems visibility. Those indicators are, Proximity Intimacy Awareness Magnitude (). I would use the results gathered from these four indicators to define the social need and identify what kind of need it may be ().

Lastly, the necessary steps for the needs assessment process would be taken. Those steps are, Engage Stakeholder, Describe the Program The process of a Needs Assessment, Focus the Evaluation (Focusing the problem), Gather Credible Data (Developing needs assessment questions, Identifying targets for Intervention, Developing a data collection plan Step, and Analyzing and displaying data). Justify Conclusions, and finally ensure the use & Share Lessons Learned (Disseminating and communicating evaluation results) ().

References

Grinnell, Richard M., et al. Program Evaluation for Social Workers : Foundations of Evidence-Based Programs, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detai… from capella on 2018-08-22 15:01:48.

Royse, David D., et al. Needs Assessment, Oxford University Press USA – OSO, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detai… from capella on 2018-08-22 14:50:23.

Watkins, R. (2008). NeedsAssessment.org. Retrieved August 22, 2018, from http://www.needsassessment.org/