There are many ways to do a needs assessment, and details on how to do this are in the President Handbook. Ideally, your PTA will do one or more broad needs assessment surveys which will include family life issues. In this case, you will not need to do a separate assessment. Speak to your PTA president so that family life issues or questions are included. Needs assessments can be sent home in newsletters, setup as an online survey, sent with registration information, or distributed and collected at faculty meetings, parent/teacher conferences, or any gathering of parents. Students may also have valuable input. Respondents do not have to be PTA members.
Once you have collected and analyzed the results, your commission will be able to identify the family life areas of most concern in your school community. You may not be able to address every area of concern, but you should be able to identify the most important issues. Choose a few areas of focus for the year, or one for each semester, such as the following:
- Involving parents
- Preparing children for kindergarten
- Parenting classes
- Child abuse and neglect
- Media literacy
- Digital citizenship
- Foster care and adoption
- Domestic violence prevention
- Child identity theft
- Internet safety and pornography
EVALUATING RESULTS
It can be difficult to assess changes that come about as a result of your programs and activities. Social changes tend to come about very slowly and as a result of many different factors. Your commission can, however, look for positive results, as well as recording what was done, what went well, what you would change if you did the activity again, and whether the activity might be worth repeating. This information, if kept and passed on, may be very valuable for your own use and for those who plan future activities and programs.