The Voinovich School is assisting the Southeastern Ohio Legal Services (SEOLS) with a project that aims to better understand and better meet the needs of the clients in the SEOLS' service area. In the past, the school helped SEOLS assemble and assess focus groups to learn about their clients' problems and needs and also to fulfill a federal mandate. The current project have a similar focus and will create a plan of action for the future.
There were three components to Phase One of this ongoing project. First the Voinovich School prepared data reports containing demographic information and other publicly available data to help identify the key target populations in the SEOLS service area. The second component consisted of an analysis of SEOLS administrative data in order to provide information about SEOLS' clients, the types of cases SEOLS handles and the amount of resources required to address clients' legal needs.
The final component of Phase One consisted of two surveys. The first survey was administered to current and potential SEOLS clients and the second survey was given to community leaders, which included attorneys and SEOLS employees. Both groups were asked to rate the prevalence of each legal problem in their community. Additionally, clients were specifically asked to report whether each legal problem was present in their household in the last year and community leaders were asked to rate the degree of priority that should be given to each legal problem. Clients were also queried on their demographic information and community leaders were asked to identify their roles and to list problems in the community that were not included in the survey.
In the final phase, Phase Two, of this project, the Voinovich School will help SEOLS assemble and conduct focus groups targeted towards client populations identified in the previous phase of research.