Family Needs Assessment

This paper will outline a needs assessment for families in south Phoenix Arizona that are living in poverty or living as working poor. There appears to be a gap when it comes to the cost of living, mainly the cost of renting or owning a home versus the amount of income a household brings in. The purpose of this paper is to explore articles and gather data from change agents within the community to get a better understanding of what is needed for families to be able to make a living wage and be able to afford a home and all the necessities associated with running a home. The main goal is taking the end results of the needs assessment back to the community leaders and stakeholders to help create a dialogue for change within their community.

About 15 percent of all Americans have incomes at or below the conservative federal poverty threshold. Children are more likely to be poor than adults, African Americans are more likely to be poor than white Americans, and very young children of color are the poorest Americans (Meyers, 2014). Poverty in America provides a solid foundation for understanding poverty issues and income support policy in the United States (Meyers, 2014). Many different families can be affected by poverty not just the poor. Poverty can affect families in different ways; some families could only face poverty for 1-2 months out of the year where others may face it all year long. There are many factors to consider when looking at families facing poverty. Some of those factors could be race, family size, and family compensation. They could not afford to put food on the table, afford medical care, or they only make a working wage to afford to keep the roof over their families head, but not able to afford anything

The plan for the interviews is to interview each agency in person in the coming weeks. When collecting this data, I hope to find trends of things such as how often families seek out assistance, how much assistance is provided to each family, and what the providers are doing to help create change in their communities. Outside of the required questions, we have to ask here is a list of questions I tend to ask each agency interviewed. The questions are as follows: 1. What is the average household family size you serve? 2. Out of the families, you serve how many seek out other forms of public assistance? 3. What other risk factors do the families face? 4. Are there concerns about a risk of multigenerational poverty? 5. How often do the same families seek out help? 6. What barriers do families identity having when it comes to having enough finances for rent and utilities? 7. What are the trends you see when it comes to helping the families you serve? 8. How many families is the agency able to help each year? 9. Are there any requirements for families to receive services? 10. Is the agency doing anything as a whole to help community over poverty? 11. What changes would you like to see that would benefit the