Needs assessment and program planning

A quality family literacy program lays a solid foundation for itself by conducting ongoing community needs assessments for family literacy, identifying target groups, and exploring potential partnerships and the availability of resources.

Ask yourself how these statements on needs assessment apply to your program.

Our family literacy program/agency …

  1. conducted an initial community assessment before starting a program to gain a broad overview of the need for family literacy and to identify the area and people most in need of family literacy services.
  2. continues to conduct needs assessments regularly as part of an ongoing process to ensure our program continues to meet the changing needs in the community.
  3. reviews information collected by other agencies to look for gaps in services in the community that family literacy programming could address, avoiding duplication of existing services.
  4. interviews key people in other agencies (by phone or in person) to learn about starting up, or developing and expanding a successful family literacy program.
  5. uses the information collected to identify and attract potential collaborators and partners that are essential to providing comprehensive family literacy services.
  6. obtains detailed, accurate, up-to-date information and statistics from reliable sources about demographics (specifically about children and families).
  7. uses the documentation to seek funding and other kinds of support for the program from local, provincial and national sources.
  8. considers the educational and non-educational needs of families in the community, to better understand the specific issues in their lives that affect their ability or motivation to attend the program.
  9. has developed a “Strategic Action Plan” that evolves to meet the changing needs of families in the community, while taking into account our agency’s capabilities.