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1998 Community Assessment |
IntroductionPURPOSEThe Community Action Network (CAN) is a private/public partnership of major community organizations committed to Austin /Travis County becoming a healthy, safe, educated and compassionate community where people work together to achieve their full potential. Reorganized in 1992, CAN has the unique mission of engaging the community in a planning process that coordinates and optimizes public, private and individual assets and actions to achieve sustainable solutions to health, human, and social issues. The CAN is directed by an appointed volunteer Resource Council, comprised of representatives of private collaboratives, governmental bodies, business groups and volunteer organizations. The work of the CAN is accomplished by widely ranging groups of volunteers from throughout the community. THE ASSESSMENTIn late 1997, the CAN commissioned an assessment of the community's condition and needs so that future planning, policy recommendations, issue solutions and resource allocations could be better framed on credible data. This Assessment Report is the result of that effort and a series of predecessor efforts that are directly related. The first formal effort was a master study conducted through extensive community input and information-gathering in 1995. This resulted in the Snapshot of Our Community report, published in May 1995. The second stage was an extensive and unprecedented effort in 1996 and 1997 that produced CANs Strategies for Building a Stronger Community: A Community Guide (the first step in the development of a comprehensive community plan for health and human services). This highly participatory effort successfully achieved a significant measure of agreement on general critical conditions, desired outcomes and potential strategies in eleven major health and human service issue areas. OUTCOMESOne of the major components of the CAN Community Guide was a set of approximately 200 desired outcomes designed to provide movement toward the "optimal" community condition. It is around these desired outcomes that the work of the current assessment began. As the effort unfolded, it became apparent that many of the outcomes were not readily measurable and, in many cases, little data existed to provide either baseline or trend information. This realization was valuable in and of itself, but created significant challenges to the credible and viable completion of the work. As a result, this Assessment Report delivers a "picture" of the community using specific indicators, while carefully identifying areas where major gaps exist and where more support, and in some cases, extensive data development are required. SUPPORTThis Assessment Report has been developed with extensive input from experts, service providers, community volunteers, advocates, funders, service consumers, and community members. A list of the many that were involved is provided in the Acknowledgements. ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORTThe methods and procedures used in developing this Assessment Report are covered in Chapter 2, following this Introduction. Some details of the means and methods, including complete listings of information resources, are provided in the Appendix. Chapter 3 presents a brief profile of Austin/Travis County and serves as a context for better understanding the communitys social and human needs. The critical emphasis is to provide a reliable demographic and economic context, given the rapid growth of recent years and the strong economy that the area is currently enjoying. The main body of the report is contained in Chapter 4, which is divided into 12 sub-chapters. Each of these sub-chapters covers a single issue area, as designated by the CAN Community Guide. Although there is a frequent overlap in people's needs across individual issue areas, and overlap in the way services are planned and delivered, the issue area organization helps clarify needs in a way which allows conclusions and recommendations to be formed. Each of the issue area chapters contains a set of common sections. They are:
KEY FINDINGS AND PLANNING RECOMMENDATIONSChapter 5 contains key findings and provides the major conclusions and recommendations drawn from those findings. |