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In recent years, the importance of need assessment as an essential tool for improving the performance and accountability of social welfare agencies has been increasingly recogruzed. Yet, little has been known regarding the capability of social welfare agencies including the community social welfare center to assess community and client needs for services. In this study, a total of 84 community social welfare centers in Seoul area are examined in order to empirically investigate the capability of the community social welfare center to conduct reliable need assessment. In doing so, emphases are on whether community social welfare centers conduct need assessments at all and, if they do, on a regular basis as well as on the quality of need assessment and on the degree and mode of utilization of need assessment result. The study results show; 1) although nearly all community social welfare centers examined conduct need assessment in one way of another, only few conduct it on a regular basis or frequently; 2) most of the community social welfare centers examined are not capable of conducting reliable need assessment; and, as a result, 3) the degree that need assessment results are utilized for the operation of community social welfare centers is in general very low. Based on the study findings, a few policy implications are drawn. One of them is that prior to -or at least along with- the institutionalization of the evaluation of the performance of community social welfare centers, it is imperative to make serious policy efforts to create conducive environment for community social welfare centers to increase the capability of assessing community and client needs for services in a more reliable manner and, thus, to improve their accountability.
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