How to identify needs in your local government area
Needs assessment is a term that you have most likely heard if you work for a local government or council. However, what exactly is it, why should you consider conducting one and what is the best approach?
This blog covers the ‘ins and outs’ of needs assessment for professionals who work in the local government and council space addressing the above questions and then some. Additionally, to make the content practical and useful, we will apply all the theory into an example so you can be confident in conducting a needs assessment once you have finished reading this blog post - and out in the real world.
Let's start with some definitions. So, what exactly is a need?
A need is defined as being:
“the measurable gap between two conditions - ‘what is’ (the current state) and ‘what should be’ (the desired state)” — Altschuld J. (2010). Needs Assessment Toolkit: An Overview
If a need implies the existence of a problem that should be attended or solved, what is a needs assessment? A needs assessment is:
“the systematic study of a problem or innovation, incorporating data and opinions from varied sources, in order to make effective decisions or recommendations about what should happen next” — The World Bank (2012). A guide to assessing needs: essential tools for collecting information, making decisions, and achieving development results
A needs assessment should assist you in making better, more informed decisions and as such, does not start with a preformed solution in mind.
Why should we identify needs?
Identifying a need is the first step in any logical act of change and is essential to making effective decisions around what to do next in addressing a problem. A change process could be driven by:
service design (or re-design)
commissioning
accountability
community engagement and investment
sector development
policy advocacy
If you work for a local council or local government, these drivers for change may not be areas that your unit or team are directly responsible for. However, the policy branches of local government (hopefully) rely on specialist branches, such as your own, and you being able to identify needs, helps you ensure your priorities are being considered when policy documents are being developed.
So what makes an effective needs assessment?
An effective needs assessment is one that takes a systematic approach to the identification, it works through a consistent process (like the model below) and while it relies on data, it also relies on decisions and judgement from people who have different perspectives.
Consistent approach for an effective needs assessment
When conducting a needs assessment, you should also consider the different types of needs that exist. These include:
Normative (expert) need refers to the needs of a group as defined by experts on the basis of research and/or professional experience
For example, a psychologist who has been working for 20+ years may feel there is a lack of mental health services for children aged 12-17 years based on their experience and knowledge of current children’s mental health research.
Felt need refers to what members of a group feel they need; this is typically expressed in natural language and based on one's subjective experience
Sticking with the youth mental health example, say a 15-year-old child knows a lot of their friends are feeling anxious, they then, along with their group of friends, identify to someone in a leadership role that there is a lack of youth mental health services for anxiety.
Expressed need is the type of need that is observed through the usage of services and interactions with surrounding environments.
For example, a youth mental health nurse suddenly notices there is an increase in demand for anxiety-related youth services, so much so that there is an extensive waiting list.
Comparative need refers to a need that is determined by comparing one group with another, typically this is expressed using numbers, rates and proportions.
An example of comparative need would be comparing the number of children between 12-17 years old who accessed a youth mental health service for anxiety-related services at one school, compared to another school.
An overview of the different types of needs
Effective needs assessments are also scalable in that their methodology can be used again and again in varying environments (i.e. the methodology used for a cohort of 1000 people, which might take six months and involve the development of multiple 100 page reports, can also be replicated and used again for a cohort of 20 people, over the course of 1 day and summarised in the introduction to a 15 page report).
Being able to defend the choices you make when completing any piece of work is important - if not more so for needs assessments. By ensuring your needs assessment methodology and choices are defensible, it means can justify them in the face of questioning, which is critical.
Finally, needs assessments are also a proactive process, meaning that they are a planned piece of work to be used for informing future priorities, NOT a last-minute, rushed, piece of work that is trying to fix problems that have erupted (a complaint to a politician for example).
Over the course of this blog series, we will be providing you with a comprehensive and practical way of completing a needs assessment that aligns with the principles listed above. We’ll cover all the methods required to complete a needs assessment, including:
community profiling
community conversations
service mapping
horizon scanning
We’ll put these steps together and find out what they are and how to do them. From there, we’ll apply them to an example of the 10,000 Steps Rockhampton program and go through it as if we were actually completing the needs assessment for that program.
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