Pilot project to develop a longitudinal study relating to family and children's service-neighborhood team services

• Main Author: Dunbar, Alexander Blair
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2012
• Subjects: social service > research; social service > public relations
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/41844

This is the report of four social work students engaged in the process of developing a longitudinal study. The original concerns guiding the enquiry involved two general concepts: (I) non-utilization of agency services and (II) lack of awareness re such services. It was felt that a large risk population are not aware of the services available to them and thus they were unable to utilize community resources. The public relations program has also felt to be a factor which should be examined. In order to study this problem in an actual setting, the Family and Children's Service's Fernwood-GIadstone neighbourhood team was chosen as the vehicle for the research project. This study is an attempt to design a data collection instrument which will measure the level of awareness about a particular agency team and Its program in a specific community. The instrument developed was a questionnaire designed to elicit responses concerning: (I) what people know about a particular agency team and its program. (II) what people know about the general services of an agency. (III) what people think of the method of publicity used by the agency. The questionnaire was administered to a population selected through utilizing the multiple phase sampling of the random sampling techniques. The responses to the questionnaire are precoded to facilitate the use of the MVTAB computer program in the analysis of the data obtained. The material obtained from the pretest sample indicates that the instrument will obtain the desired Information. The highly tentative findings (due to the small sample size) suggest that the members of the community studied have a general knowledge about the Family and Children's Service agency but are not as aware of the agency team operating out of an office in their community. The respondents stated a general willingness to utilize the services of this team when needed. This suggests that advertising is important that methods utilized thus far have not been too successful. Based on the findings of the pretest it is recommended that the data collection instrument be refined and a full study be conducted. === Arts, Faculty of === Social Work, School of === [co-authors, John Farr, Robert Leach, George Phillon] === Graduate