FCSS working on community needs assessment

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Pincher Creek and Area Family and Community Support Services (FCSS) kicked off its project to assess social needs and bridge potential gaps for those needs within the community.

The goal of the assessment is to determine and prioritize the social needs of the residents of the Town of Pincher Creek, the Municipal District of Pincher Creek, and the Village of Cowley, also referred to as the greater community.

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FCSS took interest in doing the assessment after reading the results of a similar project that Crowsnest Pass had completed.

“We have never done (a community needs assessment), and my colleague at the Crowsnest Pass FCSS has sent a copy of their recently completed Social Needs Assessment,” said local FCSS coordinator David Green. “It’s an incredibly valuable document — about 40 pages long — and they really covered the ground,” said Green.

“We recognize that there are social needs in the community. We don’t know for sure, in many respects, how they’re structured, who’s involved, but most importantly, where the gaps are between social services in the community.

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“If we can measure social needs and take a look at what’s there, then we can identify the gaps.”

The assessment aims to be thorough while being completed in a timely manner, said Green. The project officially started the last week of August.

“We’re hoping to cover a lot of ground with this thing, and we want to have it done by the end of December. It’s already underway,” said Green.

“The consultant is in place, and incidentally it’s the same consultant that Crowsnest Pass used.”

The completed assessment would be a valuable tool to give municipalities direction, said Green.

“This kind of assessment really should be done before municipal governments embark on strategic planning. It’s such a key element in the way strategic plans are assembled,” he said.

“It will also be of great value to social service agencies and providers.”

The assessment will collect data through a number of methods, including community surveys, interviews, group workshops, municipal government consultation, reviews of previous strategic plans, a review of the mission, vision, and values of each municipality being assessed, Statistics Canada data, Alberta government policies and objectives related to social well-being, and mapping of existing social assets.

Pincher Creek and Crowsnest Pass have a lot in common, and the assessment process should go more smoothly for Pincher Creek, said Green.

The Crowsnest Pass is “essentially five communities under one municipal government, so the social needs assessment process was a bit more of a challenge there than it will be here. I think we share a lot of similar trends and gaps in our communities,” he said.

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“We have a housing shortage, and they have a housing shortage. We have similar qualities of life, and I suspect we have similar population groups.

“When I look at the charts and graphs that were produced during the Crowsnest Pass Social Needs Assessment, I look at things like poverty, mental health, transportation issues, family violence, substance abuse and addictions, underemployment, and isolation and loneliness. We’re going to take a look at priority issues for women, men and families in the area.”

The completed assessment will be shared with the public and will hopefully bring action, said Green.

“We will probably present the needs assessment to the public, and identify that as a venue to move ahead with it. We don’t want it to just be a study that winds up on the shelf — we hope the needs assessment will build some momentum within the community.”

The open house will alert the community as to what’s going on and allow it to continue in a logical manner, he said.

“We don’t want the assessment to end there, we want people to continue to have input into this process.”