There is increasing need for social service agencies and organizations to allocate resources and to plan based on objective needs assessment. This requires greater access and use of data sources. The dual objectives of this paper are to describe and analyze the increased need for data use by social welfare agencies and to present the findings of a data needs assessment study of such organizations in Fort Worth, Texas. The results of this study were used in the planning and development of a series of free data use and data use-applications workshops for social service agency representatives and in the writing of a detailed Resource Manual for agency data users
