Needs-Based Assessment.pdf

Needs-based assessment is a model for profiling, assisting, and empowering job seekers, developed in New Zealand to assess capacity, willingness, and opportunity to find work, incorporating client psychological factors without requiring formal counseling qualifications. The approach is timely due to rising unemployment, increasing demand for government resources, and the adoption of social media. Governments want to reduce long-term unemployment, which has corrosive effects on individuals, families, and communities, and creates intergenerational debt. However, assisting all unemployed people is expensive, so public employment services want to target those who need extensive assistance, while avoiding helping those who can find work quickly. Traditional approaches withhold active labor market assistance until a job seeker has been unemployed for 26-52 weeks, but this logic is flawed as interventions lose efficacy over time, and behaviors such as reduced job-seeking activity and attitudes like learned helplessness become entrenched. Employment advisors are frustrated at not being able to provide assistance to newly-unemployed job seekers who may become long-term unemployed without help.