Community assessment

These are the instructions directly from the instructor. The only thing I need done is the toolkit, the presentation is just to show what needs to be included.

Community Assessment Presentation

This assignment is designed to demonstrate knowledge, skills and values associated with the generalist practice perspective at the macro level (i.e. work with small groups, organizations, and communities); to understand and be able to illustrate with examples, theories, strategies, and tactics for working with (and within) organizations; and to understand and be able to illustrate with examples, theories, strategies, and tactics organizing and empowering oppressed and marginalized communities. This assignment will assist students in developing the following social work competencies:
– Competency 2: Engage Diversity and Difference in Practice
– Competency 3: Advance Human Rights and Social, Economic and Environmental Justice
– Competency 4: Engage in Practice-informed Research and Research-informed Practice
– Competency 6: Engage with Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations, and Communities
– Competency 7: Assess Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations, and Communities
– Competency 8: Intervene with Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations, and Communities
– Competency 9: Evaluate Practice with Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations, and Communities

Students will select a community or area of town that they would like to assess, provided that a social justice/advocacy issue exists, negatively impacting a population of residents in that community. Students may not assess an entire city and must not assess a community that they have previously studied in another class. Communities to be assessed must be approved by the instructor in advance. Students should travel to the neighborhood to make observations, but may conduct interviews virtually, if needed. After conducting the assessment, students will create a presentation of their findings as well as a toolkit that can be shared with members of the community to address a particular advocacy issue in the community.

PRESENTATION: Each student will develop a 10-15 minute presentation, sharing the following with the class:
1. The name of the community, where it is located and its geographic boundaries. Include a visual map of the community.
2. What are the current demographics? Describe the population in terms of age, ethnicity, family characteristics, income, education, and class.
3. What resources and assets are available in the neighborhood? Describe such services and assets as individuals, schools, religious organizations, hospitals, social service agencies, transportation, stores, banks, governmental services, etc. Identify missing and/or inadequate services. [Include a Community Asset Map]
4. Get the perspective of the community. Utilizing social media websites, local community advocacy group websites or blogs, block club websites, or other local postings or media, describe the perspective of individuals living in the community who are directly impacted by the social justice/advocacy issue. Include links to these sources in your presentation. Based on these sources:
• What appears to be the major strengths of the community?
• What are the major needs/concerns?
• What agencies/resources are mentioned? Are they useful?
• What do the sources perceive is needed to make the community responsive to their needs and the needs of fellow community members? [Must specifically include the sources used to assess community perspective.]
5. What are the current social, political and economic issues facing the community?
6. What policies or programs have been implemented to address the problems of the community? Have they been effective? Why or why not?
7. Get a professional perspective. Interview a prominent professional working in the neighborhood to better understand the population, services available, cultural resources and assets, gaps in services, issues facing the community, and past attempts at addressing the problems of the community. [Include both a Gap Analysis and a Cultural Resource Map]
8. Identify an advocacy issue in your selected community and describe in detail how you would plan toaddress this issue, using course readings to support your plan. You will need to specifically identify which advocacy TACTIC you will use and also provide detailed ACTION STEPS for executing your advocacy plan. Your advocacy plan MUST be feasible for implementing within your selected community and MUST address the 5 questions related to action steps (as outlined in the Action Steps Softchalk lesson).

Students can utilize the presentation platform of their choice (e.g., narrated PowerPoint, recorded video, YouTube, etc.). Students are strongly encouraged to present information grounded in the voice of the community (e.g., video record neighborhoods from an individual’s perspective, record an interview with a professional, take photographs to illustrate the resources and assets (or lack thereof) within the neighborhoods/communities to document and present their findings, etc.). Creativity and innovation in your presentations are also strongly encouraged.

TOOLKIT: Students will also need to develop an advocacy toolkit that can be utilized by community members or social work practitioners in their selected community. The toolkit should NOT be written as a traditional academic paper—it should be formatted like a resource guide that is visually engaging and effective at quickly sharing useful information with the audience. An average page limit for the toolkit should be approximately 10 pages. The Toolkit MUST include the following:
1. Title Page (Visually engaging—does NOT need to be in APA format)
2. Table of Contents
3. Problem Statement (no more than one page worth of content)
a. Provide a written description of the advocacy issue/problem, including prevalence and relevant demographic data. This information should be included in your presentation, but should also be included in the toolkit document.
b. Description of current or emerging policies and laws that relate to the advocacy issue/problem—either perpetuating the problem or addressing the problem. This information should be included in your presentation, but should also be included in the toolkit document.
4. Population-Focused Resources
a. A brief description of and links to 2-3 separate resources to assist the social work practitioners and community members who are working with your population of interest or addressing your identified advocacy issue via community practice (e.g., practitioner-focused readings or journal articles, policy briefs, other brief reports, etc.)
5. Advocacy Action Steps:
a. Detailed description of your advocacy action steps—these should be clear, feasible, and able to be easily read and applied by both social work practitioners and community members working in your selected community to address your advocacy issue. Your action steps should serve as a step-by-step guide for anyone reading the document. Be sure to revisit class content on the 5 questions that need to be considered and answered through your action steps. This information should be included in your presentation, but should be expanded and more in-depth in the toolkit document.
6. Skill Development Resources:
a. A brief description of and links to 2-3 separate resources focused on skill development among social work practitioners and community members who are working to address the advocacy issue—these resources should include things like upcoming/on-going professional development opportunities, trainings, local initiatives to provide skill development, etc.
7. Online Resources:
a. A brief description of and links to 2-3 local advocacy groups, blogs, online forums, or other web-based resources that would be useful for social work practitioners or community members working to address the advocacy issue
8. References

Students are encouraged to be creative in the design of their toolkit in order to make it visually appealing and can utilize various platforms to create their toolkit (e.g., Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word, Google Docs, etc.). This is separate from your presentation and should not be created as another PowerPoint or video—your toolkit should be created using your preferred platform and then submitted as a PDF document that can be shared electronically and easily opened by others.

All sources for both the presentation and the toolkit must be documented in APA format.