Committee to develop needs assessment survey
A committee of human service organizations is developing a way to determine if everyone in Fayette County who needs services knows about them and is able to use them. As a means to that end, the Research and Professional Development Committee of the Fayette County Human Service Council Inc is developing a needs assessment survey.
At a meeting Friday, a committee debate centered on the most appropriate questions for a survey, as well as the best way to distribute it.
Allison Beckett of Penn State Fayette, who worked to compile a draft of the survey, said ideally she would like to receive input from all levels of society, from those in poverty to those making three-digit incomes.
“If we don’t understand the problems, we can’t start to address them,” Beckett said. She said the survey should be distributed to different people throughout the county to find out what the problems are for everyone.
Some of the areas included in the survey are housing, transportation, education, health care, child care, employment, access to services, family mental health counseling and services, drugs and alcohol, income and family violence.
Susan Boser of Indiana University of Pennsylvania suggested that with the state budget’s proposed cuts in human services, this is a golden opportunity to conduct a survey and then administer another one a year from now.
“It will give us a picture of what’s happening in human services and how it’s changing over time,” she said. “It will be a powerful tool for lobbying for Harrisburg.”
Locally, seven county agencies that serve 26,436 residents could lose funding when the budget is adopted June 30. Gov. Ed Rendell tentatively approved a budget that drops the local allocation from $760,633 to $50,000.
Boser also suggested that a $1,500 grant could be obtained through IUP for postage and printing costs to send out the survey. She said that once the data is obtained, the group needs to decide what to do with it.
A suggestion was made to distribute the surveys initially to clients of human service organizations before instituting a wider distribution.
Committee Chairman John Rapano said the goal is to obtain a picture of what poverty looks like in the county. He said the data can be a starting point for agencies to address solutions. Some of the objectives of the survey are to find out if everyone is aware of services, whether the services can be accessed and the effectiveness and quality of services that are available.
The committee will meet next month to finalize the survey and determine how to distribute it.