Leon County and the City of Tallahassee have jointly partnered with the Center for Health Equity (CHE) to conduct a community human services needs assessment. Over the next several months, CHE will work with local human services partners to identify the greatest areas of human services needs in Tallahassee-Leon County.

The primary purpose of the assessment is to evaluate the Community Human Services Partnership (CHSP) program. Since 1997, CHSP has served as a joint initiative of the County and City for the planning and funding of human services in the community. Human service agencies and their programs are funded in 10 CHSP categories, which have been in place for over 20 years.

The results of the needs assessment will include recommendations for changes to the existing CHSP funding categories and their respective funding allocations. In addition, the study will recommend potential uniform outcome measures to evaluate the effectiveness of programs funded through CHSP and establish a process to continually realign funding to meet changing community needs and desired community outcomes.

The assessment has commenced and will continue through summer 2019. As part of the needs assessment, CHE will conduct extensive outreach, including focus groups, interviews and a telephone survey, to gather feedback from the community.

A final report will be presented to the Leon County Board of County Commissioners and the City of Tallahassee Commission in fall 2019.