We are excited to share our 2021-2023 Community Assessment Report and Strategic Plan, which will guide our work over the next few years. The report provides a picture of our service area, a summary of current needs in our community, and concrete goals that will help us meet those needs.
Our report is based on a comprehensive needs assessment, which we began in fall 2019. From October 2019 to March 2020, we used surveys, focus groups, and stakeholder interviews to learn about our community’s most pressing needs and concerns. We gathered input from a broad range of stakeholders, including Action Inc. clients, social service providers, public officials, faith community representatives, school officials, and community members.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold in March 2020, we paused our needs assessment so we could focus on responding to the current crisis that our community was facing. In September 2020, staff and Board members reconvened to start working on our needs assessment again. We recognized that we had collected significant information prior to COVID-19, which would serve as a baseline for our assessment — but that additional information was critical so we could understand the ways in which the pandemic had impacted our community’s needs. We collected additional data to better understand the new reality on Cape Ann.
In the end, we learned that housing, employment, and behavioral health are the top needs in the Greater Cape Ann area.
As an agency, we have identified solutions that will help us address these needs in the form of new initiatives that we will develop and existing programs that we will continue to offer.
This strategic plan will also be a living document, which we will reevaluate over the course of each year in an effort to remain responsive to any developing community needs and to the changing world around us.
To read our report, click here. Thank you to all the staff, Board members, clients, and community partners who contributed to this effort.
