Assessing Social Service Gaps
Why It’s Important
Social services are not always a core municipal function, but code enforcement officers, police, fire, senior services, and other staff interact with residents in need every day. With a proactive approach, local government can better identify residents in crisis and help them respond. Municipalities also can play a role as a “super connector” referring residents to partner agencies. To do this effectively, though, towns need an awareness of area agencies, organizations, and institutions that do provide needed resources to the community.
Social services are often handled by an overlapping web of different jurisdictions, including counties, townships, and non-profits. It can be difficult to know which services exist in your area and who manages them.
Different municipal departments may come into contact with residents in need. However, without coordinated effort between departments or a dedicated staff person responsible for making social service referrals, the municipality may not always respond to these needs.
Strategies
- Create a municipal point person, such a social worker or a community relations coordinator, to refer residents to services. In many municipalities, these individuals act as “super connectors” between departments and partner organizations. Social workers can be housed in one department, in a City Manager’s office, or shared between communities.
- Engage a human or community relations commission in identifying social service gaps in the community and recommending action to the City Council or Village Board.
- Coordinate an interdepartmental referral group to identify referral needs across multiple departments.
LEARN MORE — DOWNERS GROVE
Community Profile – Village Of Downers Grove
The Village of Downers Grove decided to revive its Human Services Commission, which had not met in about eight years. The municipal code defined the commission’s work areas as: reviewing and evaluating matters of social concern, considering items referred by the council, and considering benefits to the public. Village staff and committee members engaged in a series of open-ended discussions to better define the Committee’s scope. Together, they realized that the Village and DuPage County have numerous social service providers, but many people in need of services do not know how to get them. As a result, the Commission recommended a social service referral system.
To address this need, they determined that the Commission’s role would be identifying gaps based on social service referrals through the Village. They determined that a gap exists when the Village is unable to make an effective referral. The Commission defined different types of service gaps:
- An awareness gap is when a resident does not know that there is a referral service or services available. This is hard to measure, but the Village assumed they had a large awareness gap.
- An acceptance gap is when someone is referred to a service, but they did not actually go and get the service.
- An availability gap is when there are no services available to meet a resident’s needs. So far in Downers Grove, every resident service request has been matched with a service provider. However, it is difficult to ascertain and measure how quickly a resident received services and the Village is working with providers to understand wait times anecdotally.
Based on this self-assessment, the Village launched a referral service to help identify and overcome these gaps. The Village hired a social worker within the Village Manager’s office to ensure that the position’s work touches the whole of government, rather than siloed within a particular department. Together, the social worker and Village management work together to create the referral service. Today, the Village trains all departments to identify signs of crisis and enter the individual into the person. These departments are now proactively anticipating individuals in need of service. Collectively, referral network averages about 50 requests per month.
Lessons Learned
- The Council and a Human Relations Commission provided political will and initial policy direction for this endeavor.
- Assessment requires multiple personnel with different skill sets. Social workers understand the complex web of social services and human needs, while administrative or planning staff can support through data crunching and presenting progress to the Council or Board.
- Gaps exist and partnerships matter. While most local governments do not directly provide services, they help fill gaps and connect dots so that residents can access them. Oftentimes there are other organizations providing the resources it’s important to leverage those partnerships.
- Keep a scope narrow. Social services is extremely expansive.
Learn More
Dave Fieldman
Village Manager
dfieldman@downers.us
(630) 434-5526