Matching Needs and Services (MNS) is a practice tool intended to help people who work with vulnerable children use rigorously assembled information on needs as a guide to design, implement, and evaluate more-effective services. To do this, MNS focuses on needs but links them to outcomes and thresholds before dealing with the services to achieve…

Describes a needs assessment model which can be used by grass-roots organizations to collect socioeconomic and demographic data in Hispanic and other ethnic-minority communities. (CM)

Needs assessments require staff with the necessary expertise to design the study, collect the data, analyze the data, and present results. They require money, time, and persistence, because the people one wishes to assess often are difficult to access. This article argues for the centrality of a well-done needs assessment when developing services…

A survey of parents, foster parents, and guardians whose children were group home residents indicated the need for programs with different levels of parent involvement. Written contracts between houseparents and children's parents are recommended. (Author/DB)