Insights from Experts
Talking Points
Talking Points offers insights from experts on the topics we know are important to organizations working to strengthen communities, including organizational development, childcare, and housing stabilization. Our writers share their knowledge, research, and practical strategies for building the structures and systems you need to promote excellence in service delivery.
Talking Points is published a minimum of monthly. Subscribing also gives you access to our Monthly Round Up, where we highlight blog posts, upcoming events, and newsworthy research and reflections.
Hot Topics (and Resources!) in Community Assessment
Community assessment is foundational to program planning, providing data and information that helps programs to meet children and families’ needs. There are a wide range of resources that programs may tap into to build a comprehensive community assessment or draw from for an annual update.Here, we share three tools that allow users to explore data at the national, state, and local levels. While the content in each tool is different - focusing on housing, food insecurity, and substance misuse - the functionality is very similar. Start broad and drill down to local data that show how needs vary from one community to the next.