Making Contact with Social Agencies

If you are beginning to make contact with social agencies, you may want to focus on agencies that target high need communities and already have information sharing opportunities in place. These agencies will usually have links with other service providers and have some clients with low literacy skills.

You will want to draw up a list of suitable agencies and you may want to develop a cover letter and questionnaire to be used with those agencies.

If you have already made contact with some social agencies in your community you may want to develop a sustainable model for keeping in touch with them.

Both these issues are addressed in part one of the Outreach Package.

The First Contact

An experienced literacy practitioner, or the person who is going to be the contact person with the agency, should call the executive directors of targeted agencies. Making contact at this level means that approval to proceed can be given immediately.

Agencies that are interested in increasing their knowledge of literacy issues can be asked to complete a questionnaire. The questionnaire is about the agency’s current services, the perceived need for literacy services among their client group, information about their current referral process to literacy programs and suggestions for reaching their clients to let them know about literacy opportunities. The questionnaire and cover letter can be faxed to the agencies and meetings can be arranged to discuss the responses. It is best to arrange the meeting during this phone call as it avoids playing telephone tag.

A sample cover letter follows, together with the questionnaire used by the Ottawa Community Coalition for Literacy.