Community Needs Assessment
Counseling Service of Addison County (CSAC) conducted a Community Needs Assessment (CNA) during the summer of 2025. Many community members participated, helping CSAC gather data about some of the biggest service needs in our community.
The CNA will help CSAC and its partners to:
- Create evidence-based policies that tackle the most urgent mental health, substance use, and developmental needs.
- Design services that specifically improve access and outcomes for those who are currently underserved.
- Make staffing decisions that strengthen our ability to meet the most important needs.
To view the complete CNA, please click here.
The information contained within the Community Needs Assessment (CNA) came from multiple types of sources:
- Stakeholder interviews and focus group discussions, including CSAC clients, CSAC staff, community members and partner organizations.
- Service data analysis, including information on client demographics, service patterns, and outcomes.
- Document review including CSAC’s strategic plan and data reports, annual reports, client satisfaction surveys, staff SWOT analyses, and other local needs assessments.
- Information from the U.S. Census, public health monitoring data, and epidemiological studies.
Additional information about methods and data sources can be found in the appendix of the CNA.
Feedback included many things CSAC does well:
Strong Partnerships
CSAC has a long history of building partnerships and has solid commitment to being a good community partner. Our staff shows strong mission commitment, and CSAC maintains one of the most experienced service teams across Vermont’s designated-agency workforce.
High Satisfaction
When people engage with CSAC, service satisfaction is high: the 2023 client satisfaction survey shows nearly every client feels respected by staff and 93% feel they received the help they needed.
Children and Youth
CSAC is estimated to have served ALL children and youth in the community with a Severe Emotional Distress (SED) diagnosis that substantially limits their life at home, at school, or in the community.
Feedback also identified places where we can better support our community:
Intake Process
Our intake process can be confusing and frustrating due to our multiple phone numbers and intake processes. We are streamlining the path to our ‘front door’ to make it easier for people to understand what services we provide and how to access them.
What's Missing
We’re looking at what may be missing from our CNA such as feedback from our farming community to understand areas where CSAC can build new connections to folks within Addison County.
Focus
As we move forward, this information will help us focus on maintaining areas of strength and improving areas of weakness so we can continue to serve our community’s evolving needs in the best way possible.
The CNA is an important step in CSAC’s work to become a Certified Community Behavioral Health Center (CCBHC).
Coordinated & Comprehensive Care
CCBHCs provide coordinated and comprehensive behavioral health care which is funded more sustainably than Vermont’s current community mental health system. Learn more about CCBHCs here.
State of Vermont's Role
Vermont is transitioning its mental & behavioral health services to a CCBHC model. This process takes several years and changes will occur gradually. The CCBHC transition is separate from the recent changes to how Vermont provides services to our Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Community.
CCBHC and the CNA
CCBHCs are required to use the CNA process to assess and respond to community needs. This ensures that CSAC can respond to the specific and unique situation of Addison County. CSAC hopes to leverage CCBHC resources to continue our innovative work while also meeting specific areas of community need such as expanded hours or additional clinical support.
CSAC is very grateful to everyone who participated and looks forward to the process again in 2028!
To stay up to date on the needs of our community, CSAC will repeat the CNA every 3 years to track progress and identify areas of unmet community need.
August 4, 2026