Asset Assessments and Community Social Work Practice

Download or read book Asset Assessments and Community Social Work Practice written by Melvin Delgado and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-18 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Needs assessments identify the needs for services, answering questions about who needs these services and in what priority. Asset assessments focuses on existing resources; combing both needs and asset assesments helps find the gaps in these services and is useful to organizations and communities. Assets assessments differ dramatically from their needs assessments counterparts along a variety of key dimensions. Asset assessments generally attempt to: (1) focus on capacities rather than problems/needs; (2) actively seek community participation and develop collaborative partnerships; (3) seek to tap and enhance community competencies; (4) seek to equalize power between residents and professionals; (5) be proactive rather than reactive to problems; and (6) stress community contributions and ownership of the process and are thus empowerment-driven.