Assessment Plan

Assessment Plan

1. Recruitment Process
• Our recruitment process includes connecting with a variety of homeless providers to reach our target population.
• Sue, Josh, and Cynnamon plan to meet with the Consumer Advisory Board (CAB) with the Fourth Street Clinic on Feb 18th.  The CAB is composed of members who have all previously experienced homelessness.
• Emily is working to reach out to staff at the Road Home to help us connect with individuals experiencing homelessness.
• Sue has connected with the Volunteers of America (VOA) Detox HUD program to run a focus group with the chronically homeless individuals in that program.
• Cynnamon plans to connect with case workers at Valley Storefront to connect with individuals who are experiencing homelessness and a mental illness.
2. Approximate number of people to include in the assessment.
• We want to include a variety of individuals within our target population.   To accomplish this task we plan to speak to clients working with several different homeless service agencies including Fourth Street Clinic, The Road Home and VOA.
• Approximately 8-10 people will participate in the focus group at VOA Detox.
• We will conduct interviews with 6 or more individuals through the Road Home and their housing programs.
3. Approximate number of focus groups/interviews/surveys to be conducted.
• 1 meeting with the Consumer Advisory Board at Fourth Street Clinic.
• 1 focus group conducted with the VOA Detox HUD program which serves the chronically homeless.
• We plan to conduct in-person interviews with approximately 6 individuals within our target population.
4. Time and location of the assessment.
• CAB meeting will be February 18th at 6pm at the Fourth Street Clinic.
• Focus Group will be held at the VOA Detox program, on February 4th at 6:00 pm.
• Interviews will be completed with our target population over the next 6 weeks.
5. Roles and responsibilities of persons planning and facilitating the assessment, including data collection and analysis plan.
• Sue is planning to facilitate the focus group, with Emily attending to take notes.
• Sue, Josh, and Cynnamon will be attending the CAB meeting, however we are not sure the time will be allotted to speak with them.  We will hope to conduct a brief assessment and obtain email addresses to send out a full survey/assessment.
• Emily has submitted our interview questions to The Road Home for approval and then will meet with clients in housing and the shelter to complete in-person interviews.
• We all will be conducting interviews with the target population.
• Once we have all the information gathered we will review it as a group and analyze our data.

Semi-Structured Assessment Guide

1. Introductory verbal script with purpose and procedures of assessment.

• Thank you all for taking the time to participate in our focus group.  My name is _______, we are from the University of Utah Social Work program.  You were all asked to participate due to having experienced homelessness.  We are inquiring about needs and community issues that may directly affect the homeless population, and how you would like to engage in taking action about these issues.  There are no wrong answers and we hope that you can share with us your point of view.  “Keep in mind that we’re just as interested in negative comments as positive  comments, and at times the negative comments are the most helpful.”  (Kruger, 2002).   Please know that your name and any identifying information will remain confidential.  We will use your first names during the focus group but will not publish any names with our results.  You will see us taking notes during the focus group so that we can remember the comments that you share.

2. Discussion of informed consent.

• We will discuss informed consent to let the clients know who we are, the purpose of the focus group and that participation is voluntary. At any time if a participant is not comfortable with the questions they can skip the question and also ask to not participate further. We want to ensure that all participants know that if they do not wish to participate at any time of the focus group this would in no way affect their services at the program they are enrolled in. We will also reiterate confidentiality and explain how their information will be protected. All of this information can also be included in a Informed Consent Form that may be used.
• This is an example of the Informed Consent Form that we may use:

Consent to Participate in Focus Group Study as part a

Needs Assessment for Individuals Who are/have Experienced Homelessness

The purpose of the group discussion and the nature of the questions have been explained to me. I consent to take part in a focus group about my experiences and feelings towards advocating for issues in our community affecting those who are experiencing homelessness. I also consent to be audio-recorded during this focus group discussion. My participation is voluntary. I understand that I am free to leave the group at any time. If I decide not to participate at any time during the discussion, my decision will in no way affect the services that I receive at Volunteers of America Adult Detox. None of my experiences or thoughts will be shared with anyone outside of the University Of Utah, College Of Social Work unless all identifying information is removed first. The information that I provide during the focus group will be grouped with answers from other people so that I cannot be identified.

Please Print Your Name: _____________________________ Date:  ________________

Please Sign Your Name:  _____________________________ Date:  ________________

Witness Signature: __________________________________ Date:  ________________

http://www.rowan.edu/colleges/chss/facultystaff/focusgrouptoolkit.pdf

3. List of questions to be asked.  We will use similar questions in the focus groups and interviews.

Gender ?: ______________

Age Group: ___ under 18 ___ 18-25 ___ 26-35 ___ 36-55 ___56-65 ___ over 65

How long have you lived in the Salt Lake area? __less than 6 months __6-12 months __1-5years __5 years or more

Are you: __currently homeless  or  __formerly homeless and now living in housing?

What is the length of time you have experienced homelessness?

When is the last time you voted?

1. In your opinion, what are the biggest issues or concerns facing the homeless community?

2. What is something that you can do to take action on one of these issues?

3. What would you need to be able to take those actions?

4. What is the biggest hurdle you have faced individually while experiencing homelessness?

5. If you were to start an agency to work with the homeless community, what services would you provide?

4. Wrap-up.

• After concluding our surveys and focus groups we will thank the participants for agreeing to participate in our project.  We will remind them that we are completing a project for school and will pass on what we have learned, but are not in a position to design programs to meet the needs we have discussed.  If participants have any questions about existing services we will do our best to refer them to local agencies, all of us have worked with the homeless population so we have some knowledge about what services are available.  We do not have a budget to provide food or other incentives for participation so are not planning to provide these items.

Final Thoughts

• After gathering data from our population we will review our survey and results from the focus group to determine our next step in formulating our project.
• We initially wanted to do a project that focused on empowering the homeless population to be involved in voting, and assisting them to combat barriers such as difficulty registering that prevented them from voting.  As we thought more about our project we realized we need to gather information directly from the homeless population to know more about their needs, concerns, and the ways that they would like to be involved in change rather than assuming their needs and trying to make change on their behalf.
• We are excited to get the results from our interviews and focus groups, and use those to guide our next steps in the macro group project.