Needs Assessments: Listening to the Community

Individual Interviews

Individual interviews can be used to gather the following:

• Demographic information on crime victims with disabilities.
  
  
• The perspectives and experiences of professionals working with crime victims with disabilities.
  
  
• Information on how disability service organizations identify whether a client has been a victim of a crime.
  
  
• Information on how various service agencies respond to suspicions or reports of a crime against a person with a disability.
  
  
• Information about the readiness of victim service and criminal justice systems to provide accommodations and accessible services to crime victims with disabilities.

Lafourche Parish conducted individual key informant interviews with people with disabilities that focused on their experiences and expectations concerning local law enforcement and other service systems. Questions concerned crime reporting, knowledge of victim services, communication issues, and how local agencies could improve the ways they communicate information to people with disabilities. Safe Passage’s Handbook for Conducting Interviews offers detailed examples of processes and protocols involved in this kind of interpersonal data collection, from recruiting participants to conducting interviews to followup.

In addition to people with disabilities, the subgrantees interviewed law enforcement officers, domestic violence and sexual assault center personnel, state and county victim advocates, forensic nurses, physical therapists, hospital staff, personal care assistants, and disability service providers during the assessment process.