NEEDS ASSESSMENT OF THE DAMIANO CENTER
AND CENTRAL HILLSIDE COMMUNITY
CATHY SHANKS
JOHN BEAULIEU AND RAY SIMMONS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

NEEDS ASSESSMENT OF THE DAMIANO CENTER AND CENTRAL HILLSIDE COMMUNITY

This study is a needs assessment of the Damiano Center Inc. and of the community of Central Hillside of Duluth, MN. which it serves. Damiano Center is a charity organization that provides clothing, meals and social services for people who are in need.
Specifically, we want to answer the following questions through this research. 1. What does the Central Hillside community identify as its most vulnerable populations? 2. What social services are currently offered in the Central Hillside community? 3. Are the current levels of charity services at Damiano adequate? 4, How satisfied are people with current services provided by Damiano? 5. Should Domino maintain its traditional focus on charity services or move toward training and employment? 6. How is Domino perceived by other social service agencies and the funding community? 7. How important is the issue of racism within the community and should Damiano play a role in addressing the issue? 8. Should Damiano involve itself in more political advocacy?
Methods
The means of gathering data for this study was through a survey of key informants who livedand/or worked in the Central Hillside neighborhood. Secondary data was also gathered from the U.S. census and previous interviews conducted about the agency. The key informants surveyed were from the following target groups: health, education, religious, business, agencies, foundations, neighborhood leaders, social services, and Damiano consumers. A community needs assessment matrix was utilized to identify needs and agency services that exist in the community.
Research Design
The design of this study was exploratory. Data was gathered via a twenty item survey conducted with twenty-four key informants in the Central Hillside community. Respondents were identified based on their membership in one of the targeted groups mentioned previously. Eleven of the questions in the survey were structured using a five point Likert scale format ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Some questions are open-ended questions which are intended to solicit qualitative responses and the remaining questions are more closed-ended questions designed to obtain specific information such as length of involvement with the Central Hillside community.
Results
Beyond citing the issue of moving toward self-sufficiency as pre-eminent, the populations identified as most vulnerable were women and children, minorities, and the issues of the unemployed. Together these responses show the importance of supporting the populations affected by welfare reform. Although the responses indicate that Damiano should move more towards services allowing for self-sufficiency, they do not indicate in their other responses that the charity services should be dropped. This belief that charity services; the core of Damiano's mission should continue and be augmented by self-sufficiency services was echoed by a large funder.
It appears that a large issue in the Central Hillside Community based on answers throughout the survey is the issue of racism. The majority of respondents were white and over 80% felt that racism is a major barrier. They also responded to the belief that Damiano should be involved in some way in raising this as a community issue and becoming a strong advocate for discrimination.
Recommendations
We suggest additional self-sufficiency programs to run simultaneously with Opportunities Cooking. Damiano can combine secondary support services and seminars to include clients from all programs. The increase of networking within programs and with other agencies will be something which needs to also be studied. Racism was identified as a major area of need and the belief was that Damiano should involve itself. Much more research needs to be done in this area before Damiano should begin steps toward racial advocacy on any large level. Discussion can also be given to ways in which Damiano can become advocates for the needs of welfare to workfare recipients. As a leader in agencies working for the needy, Damiano could be instrumental in networking with funders and other agencies toward such advocacy.
Limitations
The present proposal has methodological weaknesses and its findings should be interpreted with discretion. The data collected came from secondary sources, key informants and the use of snowball sampling. The problem with secondary data is that there could be possible errors in the secondary data analysis that could effect the validity of the research. Community leaders were contacted by telephone and appointments made to conduct the research. However, most contacts were either unable or unwilling to participate due to time limitations and scheduling conflicts. Ruling out the use of mailed questionnaires thinking we would receive a high rate of non response, we conducted face-to-face interviews. This technique also produced a low rate of responses to our qualitative questions.
Of concern, the key informants that did participate in the initial survey few failed to produce referrals to other community leaders, thus hampering the snowball sampling technique. With the lack of referrals the researchers had to go into the community and enlist leaders to participate in the study. Of the key informants that did participate they found the instrument too time consuming and the overall attitude towards the survey was not positive. The instrument could have been designed to gather more information in the qualitative responses. There are also limitations that center on the process of recording data and the effect that face to face interviews had on those being interviewed.

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