Dialogue on Poverty

A Dialogue on Poverty meeting was held on May 18 with the Carbon County Community Action Committee for the 2015 Carbon County Needs Assessment.

The goal of this assessment is to find out the extent of poverty in Carbon County, factors that support the creation of poverty, services and resources currently available to offset creation or impact of poverty, priorities for meeting needs and barrier to services.

Sheela Schermetzler, Grant Manager for Albany County, presented the final report at the meeting.

According to the report, a ranking of recommended priority needs was determined by using a survey that 115 citizens from Baggs, Medicine Bow, Rawlins, Saratoga and Sinclair completed.

The rank of importance for Carbon County was; affordable housing (290 points), accessibility/affordability to medical services (dental, prescription drugs & eye care) (244 points), child care (244 points), employment and training (162 points), food, commodities and nutrition (155 points) and transportation (133 points).

Then, community meetings were held in March to determine a more specific understanding of what citizens felt were important needs of the community.

Based off of the report, a range of comments were made from the public during those meetings.

Notable findings included, “that over 10 percent of Carbon County Population indicated that their mental health, which includes stress, depression and problems was not good for 14 of more of the past 30 days.”

In addition, according to the report, “these mental health issues are not being addressed, due to lack of mental health professionals and a psychiatrist.”

The final needs assessment report will be available after June 30, 2015. The report will also be available at http://www.carbonwy.com.

For more information regarding the report, contact Schermetzler at [email protected].

 

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