Client-focused treatment and referral must be based on an understanding of the family relationships, cultures, and communities of clients served by nonprofit human service organizations. Human service providers are responsible for understanding the contexts in which their clients operate including community disparities and resources. Human service providers and administrators must be aware of provider scope of practice and organization limitations in delivery of services. Building organizational collaborations and a client focused referral network will close the service delivery gap towards meeting client and community needs. Developing a referral network starts with creating a community resource inventory or mapping resources.

For this Assignment, you will take an inventory of all the groups (associations, organizations, and institutions) that exist in your community, or the community of the human service organization where you work, that you can partner with and/or use as a referral network.

You will start by identifying the community and radius in which you will be cataloguing resources.

Next, you will create a list of all of the associations, organizations, agencies, and institutions that you already know about.

Then, you will use other sources to complete this list

These sources can include:

• United Way 211. (2015). Information and Referral System. Retrieved from http://www.211.org/. This resource contains information on nonprofit organizations for many communities.
• Community websites which can give you information about community resources and the names of key community stakeholders who you could list as contacts if you need more information about community resources
• The yellow pages
• Town directories
• The chamber of commerce which will usually have a list of the businesses in the community
• Your local newspaper may have its own unpublished list of organizations and institutions that are not generally published that they could make available to you
• Physical or virtual bulletin boards and community calendar-type listings
• Your friends and colleagues may know about groups, organizations, and community assets

Refine and revise your list by functions and provided services.

Once you have completed your list of resources, you will create a presentation with visual aids to communicate community resources.

Your presentation should be 8–10 slides in length with utilization of the notes section. Your presentation should include pictures and a map (review example in Course Documents).

Your note section should include details about the organizations that exist within your community, type of agency, populations served, services provided, contact information, distance from your organization, etc. With each one, think about what exists within the organization beyond their intended purpose(s). For example, you may have a church in your neighborhood. Beyond being a place of worship for its members, a church may have a meeting space, a parking lot, a copier, chairs, tables, storage, and a kitchen. It may provide food boxes to the community once a week, vouchers for thrift store clothes, or resume assistance for unemployed community members. Along with the organization’s purpose, include vision, mission, and goal(s). Which organization already collaborates or belongs to a coalition? You might look for churches, colleges, universities, elderly care facilities, fire departments, hospitals, clinics, mental health facilities, libraries, police department, schools, utilities, community centers, radio or TV stations, small businesses, large businesses, social services, government agencies, home-based enterprises, nonprofit organizations, religiously-affiliated organizations, or farmers markets. You might explore air quality, water safety, landscaping, parks, recreation areas, and vacancies. How is land used? How would you like to see the land being used? What buildings or structures exist within the community? How are the buildings or structures used?

Submitting Your Assignment

Put your Assignment in a PowerPoint presentation. Save it in a location and with a name that you will remember. When you are ready, submit it to the Unit 8 Assignment Dropbox.