Asset Assessments and Community Social Work Practice

By: Melvin Delgado and Denise Humm-Delgado

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Synopsis: 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.