Identifying Issues - Community Development - Lecture Slides, Slides of Human Development

Download Identifying Issues - Community Development - Lecture Slides and more Slides Human Development in PDF only on Docsity!

Identifying issues and needs

within the community

Identifying community issues and needs

• Contacting people and conducting an analysis of needs
• Bringing people together to identify specific needs
• Identifying what required needs are to be met
• Identifying goals and strategies
• Forming and maintaining the organisation to meet these goals/strategies

Identifying community issues and needs Here is an alternative model.

• Identify the issue or problem: name, define, articulate
• Analyse the problem
• Identify the aims and objectives (goals)
• Put together a plan of action: who is going to do what; when; how; resources required etc (sometimes referred to as the strategies stage.)
• Put the plan into action
• Evaluate the process and the progress towards goals

Where are the similarities and differences?

Identifying community issues and needs

• These models are a clear indication of the steps involved in community development. If you find yourself getting lost in the terminology, go back to the models!
• They can be of use in getting a bearing when the community development terrain becomes unclear.

Identifying community issues and needs

The process is repeated twice more with a total attendance of three people!!

Some residents then come to the two workers looking for a “hand in setting up a bingo group.” This time the intiative is a resounding success.

What does this tell you??? discuss

Identifying community issues and needs

This story highlights some of the key “real world” issues in community development

• Starting where the people are
• The necessity for community members to own the cd strategy
• The discrepancy between what a specific community may want to do and what the community worker may identify as the key issue

Identifying community issues and needs

2. Vision-based

(e.g: “What could we do to make this a more healthy community?” “How could we employ our young people within the local community?)

Identifying community issues and needs

How do we know the issues in a local community?

In most instances, the communities are aware of the issues or problems. The task of the community worker is to refine and clarify issues by facilitating group processes, providing information etc.

Identifying community issues informally

Alan Twelvetrees suggests the following:

• If you have the chance to renew a contact, take it
• Think about the impression you are making
• Pay attention to what is happening in your local community. Listen. Notice. And if you don’t know how to, then learn

Identifying community issues and needs

• Get out in the local community; visit neighbourhoods that are new to you. His quote: ‘Walk, don’t drive.”
• A nice reminder: People will give when they are likely to receive.
• Read the local newspaper
• Read the editorial and letters to the editor

Identifying community issues and needs

• Gather as much information as possible
• Is the issue the domain of local, state or federal government. What are the implications?
• Who are the relevant networks, peak bodies, stakeholders?
• Use the internet. Is the issue apparent in other communities?

Identifying community issues and needs

• Gather formal data
• Talk with local politicians. What are their views
• Make sure the information you gather is readily accessible to all members of the intitiative. Each member is a potential messenger, recruiter and publicist

Identifying issues formally

• Interviews (face to face)
• Questionnaires (face to face; phone; mail)
• Requests for submissions on a particular issue
• Focus groups
• Public meetings/forums

These mechanisms are important components in the community development workers toolkit.

Quantitative research

• Information is presented as numbers, percentages, statistics, eg: data collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the national census. Quantitative data is often associated with “hard science.”