SOWK 410 Needs Assessment

SOWK 410 Needs Assessment

SOWK 410 Needs Assessment Assignment

The purpose of the Needs Assessment Assignment is to understand neighborhoods and communities and the theoretical underpinnings involved.  Students will employ community asset mapping and apply the NASW Code of Ethics to organizational and community practice.

Using the Kirst-Ashman & Hull text, each student will complete a 3-5 page Community Needs Assessment of their local community.  The purpose of this assessment will be used to gather local data about your community (use statistics that provide an overview of the demographics), identify key challenges that your community faces, identify both causes and contributing factors to these unique challenges, recognize local assets within the existing community to overcome identified challenges, and finally, identify gaps in resources that prevent individuals within the local community from getting the help they need.  The needs assessment will need to define the scope and problem, identify both strengths and challenges, determine key stakeholders (including the local church) that will be involved, data to support the needs and findings, and finally, develop a step-by-step action plan to address the identified gaps in resources. At least 5 scholarly references, using APA formatting, are required.

The paper will assess Competency 1-Ethics/Prof. Behavior (values, cognitive/affective processes), Competency 2-Diversity (knowledge), Competency 3-Justice (values, knowledge, cognitive/affective processes), Competency 4-Research (knowledge), & Competency 5-Policy (knowledge, values, cognitive/affective processes).