Agility: Redesigning and Executing a Community Needs Assessment During COVID-19
Planning, designing, organizing, scheduling -- in our work, preparation sets a project up for success. So, when OMNI began working with Adams County, Colorado in January 2020 to design and administer their 2020 CSBG data collection in March, we had all the components set, including plans for in-person surveys and focus groups across multiple community-based settings. However, when COVID-19 made in-person data collection impossible, we leaned heavily on our core values to reimagine the work in a way that would still deliver great results to our client and keep community participants and OMNI staff safe.
The Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) provides funds to alleviate the causes and conditions of poverty in communities. A condition of the funds is fulfilling a Community Needs Assessment and development of a Community Action Plan every three years to address the needs of low-income residents. In this needs assessment, our goals were to:
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Identify the causes and conditions of poverty in Adams County
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Determine the needs of residents who have low-income
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Determine how well the needs of residents are being met
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Identify (organization-based and client-based) barriers to serving residents
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Identify community strengths and assets
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Solicit recommendations of solutions to address barriers
Designing a needs assessment requires a lot of planning and moving parts. It also requires evaluators to create a comfortable environment where participants feel safe providing personal information. We were excited about our approach to capture data from residents in-person through surveys and focus groups. But, when physical distancing requirements in Colorado made in-person work impossible, OMNI was forced to quickly recreate our game plan.
First, we changed the survey to be administered online and partnered with key stakeholder agencies to share our flyers and email communications with their clients. Despite administering a survey in the midst of the pandemic and with a quick timeline, 157 Adams County residents participated, many of whom who were severely impacted by the pandemic.
Second, in-person focus groups were adapted to phone interviews with residents. We chose phone interviews for residents as to avoid challenges presented from any digital divide[1] in a virtual focus group format. This approach also allowed for a more private conversation between participants and our interviewers, which can be especially beneficial when discussing sensitive topics such as poverty and the added stress from COVID-19. Interviews were also conducted in English or Spanish to ensure that we heard from Latinx residents. Additionally, we facilitated a virtual focus group with community service providers to better understand the needs of their clients and the barriers and gaps accessing services.
“It was a pleasure and a learning experience to work with Paola and the team. Due to the current situation, we had to hold on the assessment and switch things around but they were willing to revise plans and continue to do the great work they did and complete the assessment.”
In addition to changing the way we collected data, the pandemic required us to change what kind of data we collected so that we could be responsive to changing conditions. We couldn’t give a comprehensive story of what was happening in the county without learning about COVID-19’s specific effects. By adding questions to understand the effects of COVID-19, we learned that nearly all participants were impacted by the pandemic.
Some of those effects were as follows:
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94% reported income impacts
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80% reported employment impacts
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74% reported physical effects of stress
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71% reported likelihood of seeking related government support
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70% reported school closure impacts
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35% reported impacts on ability to make rent/mortgage payments
The report also raised a series of recommendations for Adams County to consider in its efforts to address the causes and conditions of poverty and develop their Community Action Plan. These included a need for: affordable and accessible housing solutions; affordable and accessible high quality child care solutions; adult dental, hearing, and vision services support; bolstering healthy food access; enhancing the Adams County resource map; bolstering aid to families and schools for remote learning; enhancing employment support services; enhancing community services navigator positions; continuing to provide flexible funding to providers; and encouraging further coordination and collaboration between providers.
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/digital%20divide