Needs Assessment

What is a Needs Assessment?

Needs assessment can be defined as the process of measuring the extent and nature of needs of a particular target population, enabling services to respond to them. As such, needs assessment are a valuable tool for informing the planning process.

Needs Assessments within the Council

Having accurate data relating to resident or client group need is an integral part of good planning and successful performance management.  Without a clear understanding of the outcomes sought by residents, there is little point in spending time and energy monitoring and managing activity.

The council, often working with partner agencies, conducts a number of strategic needs assessments, the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) being the most well known (to view click here) and examines the key health and wellbeing issues of the Island.

Individual service areas should be well informed about the needs of their particular client groups at a local level. This ‘intelligence’ is captured as part of the annual business planning process.

A good quality needs assessment process will:
  • Identify the needs of a target population in a particular area – this will include a review of the existing sources of information relevant to the target population and profiles of existing services and clients/user groups.
  • Help to prioritise those needs to ensure better planning of local services and more effective allocation of resources – this may include the views of the target population, professionals and service providers.
  • Lead to the development of strategies and related action plans which identify how these needs will be addressed – each needs assessment must provide analysis and interpretation of the results in order to draw conclusions that can support further planning.

Needs Assessment Documents

The following links direct you to needs assessments that have taken place within the council:

Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (PDF via web link)

Housing Market Assessment (PDF)

Local Economic Assessment (Full Report) (PDF)

Local Economic Assessment (Executive Summary) (PDF)

Local Economic Assessment (Statistical Summary) (PDF)

The Isle of Wight Drug & Alcohol Team (DAAT) – Needs Assessment data for Adult Treatment Plan 2010/11 (Word)

Further information on the DAAT Adult Treatment Plans is available – click here.

The following links to needs assessments carried out by the Isle of Wight NHS Primary Care Trust:

Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment (PDF)

Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment (Web link)

The following links to the Isle of Wight Integrated Sexual Health Networks (WishNet) Sexual Health needs assessment planning:

Sexual Health Needs Assessment (Web link)

Further needs assessments will be uploaded to this page once they have been identified and completed.




Page last updated on: 23/05/2012