Assignment Task:
Community Needs Assessment Plan - Developing Interview Questions
When you carry out a community needs assessment, it is useful to interview stakeholders (referred to as informants) to better define the problem that you are addressing, achieve a common understanding of it, and reach an agreed upon scope for the assessment. The informants whom you interview should be well versed in the problem, either through personal experience or professional expertise, and should be able to see it from different perspectives.
For this Discussion, you will identify one informant whom you could interview if you were to carry out your community needs assessment plan. Then, you will develop a series of open-ended interview questions to ask the informant.
To Prepare:
1. Review your Course Announcements for possible information related to this week's Discussion and Assignment.
2. Review the Learning Resources on interviewing an informant for a community needs assessment. Consider the examples of questions that are provided and think about how each would help to better define a problem or achieve a common understanding of it. In addition, think about which questions you would ask to reach an agreed upon scope of the community needs assessment.
3. Reflect on the team that you assembled last week for your community needs assessment. Identify one stakeholder (referred to as an informant) that you would interview and consider why you chose this stakeholder over the others.
4. Think about the open-ended questions that you would ask the informant to better define the social problem, achieve a common understanding of it, and reach an agreed upon scope of the community needs assessment.
Post a brief description of the social problem that you chose for your Final Project. Then, describe a stakeholder (referred to as an informant) from the team that you assembled last week that you would interview to learn more about your social problem. Explain why you selected this stakeholder to interview, rather than the other stakeholders on the team. Finally, post five broad, open-ended interview questions that you would ask the informant to help you better define the problem, achieve a common understanding of it, and reach an agreed upon scope of the community needs assessment.
Addressing Homelessness Through Strength-Based, People-First Language
For the Final Project, I have decided to concentrate on homelessness, a critical issue related to the human services profession that affects my community and the entire world. I chose the topic of homelessness because I have seen its impact in practice when I was working as a human services worker. I have seen the difficulties that people who are homeless have in finding and maintaining housing and the challenges they encounter in trying to access needed resources.
Over the years, homeless people have been labelled with derogatory terms that have the potential to diminish their humanity, for instance, the use of the term 'the homeless' or 'vagrants' (Murray et al., 2024). Such language creates the impression that being homeless is an unchangeable state in the person.
To reframe the issue using strength-based, people-first language, I will refer to homelessness as "people who are experiencing housing unsteadiness." This language does not focus on the problem itself but on the fact that individuals are facing it and the capacity they have to overcome it. In this regard, I compare homelessness to sailing through a stormy sea where people require a safe haven to seek refuge and ultimately return to the shore. This metaphor points towards the facet of strength and the possibility of renewal, which becomes possible with the support of the community and its resources in order to help the person in question get back on his/her feet and lead a normal life again.
By using careful language when discussing homelessness and ensuring that there is a clear plan in place to address the issue, it is possible to build a better society that is more accepting of homeless people, which can lead to long-term change.