Client-centred community needs assessment

This paper describes a methodology for the assessment of human service needs in a community. While the procedures were developed for identifying needed services for substance abusers, with some modification they can be used in a needs assessment for any social or health problem. The necessary information can be acquired by incorporating a few additional questions into an agency's existing assessment protocol, and can therefore provide an ongoing source of prospectively collected needs assessment information to the community. The format relies on a previously completed comprehensive assessment that identifies specific client problems. It then facilitates the development of an ideal treatment plan which, when compared to the resources that actually exist in the community, leads to the identification of needed services. The approach aggregates information collected over many individual client assessments in order to identify community service needs. These needs may be interventions that do not exist in the community, or interventions that exist but are not available or accessible to particular segments of the population. The rationale and procedural details of this approach are described in some depth, and a number of advantages of this approach over other needs assessment methods are discussed. Finally, a brief report of the results from a pilot test of the procedures demonstrates that the approach yields information that is easily translated into priorities for community planning and development.