Introduction to Themes

In an effort to identify the strengths and weaknesses of Warrenton, the team conducted interviews with service providers and focus groups with community members between October 2000 and March 2001. It was during these exchanges that the richest information about the town and its people was uncovered. Initially, five themes emerged from community member focus groups as topic areas that were frequently addressed during these discussions. The initial community member themes were: For the providers, eight themes were identified:

Although careful time and effort were taken to uncover the above themes, they are on some level a result of the team's own interpretations of the interviews and focus groups. Consequently, the team presented the above themes to the Warren County planning committee to ensure that they resonated with the community members and providers who are part of the group. While the committee agreed the themes were all important, they offered the following suggestions.

First, the committee believed themes uncovered during interviews and focus groups are not specific to Warrenton; they are issues that affect the entire county. Consequently, the committee suggested the information gathered during the Warrenton AOCD be communicated to the residents of Warren County, including county government, and not just residents of Warrenton.

Second, the committee felt some of the community member and provider themes were connected, and should be collapsed into single themes. Specifically, the group collapsed sense of community (community member theme), collaboration, and resources and benefits (provider themes) into a single theme entitled "sense of community and collaboration." The group believes collaboration is tied closely to the resources within a community and that collaboration is affected by the degree of community connectedness felt within a community. Consequently, the committee felt sense of community, collaboration, and resources and benefits should be presented as a single theme, with community member and provider insight integrated throughout the theme.

Next, the group wanted mentality of poverty to become part of the economics theme. Again, the group believes poverty is related to, and affects Warrenton and Warren County's economy, and should be addressed in this context. Another minor modification to the themes was the renaming of the "access to resources" theme to "transportation" because the committee believes the lack of transportation in the county affects access to resources.

Finally, the committee believes the youth theme is best addressed in the context of education (community member theme) and recreation (both a community member and service provider theme) since these are the two areas that reference youth.

As a result of this input, community member and service provider perspectives are integrated under the following themes:

The first four themes rely heavily on secondary data; the last three themes deal more with subjective perceptions of the people interviewed. Based upon the analysis of interviews and focus groups and the suggestions from the planning committee, we believe the above themes accurately reflect the perspectives of the community members and service providers interviewed as part of this project. The following pages present each theme in detail. For each theme, appropriate secondary data (if it was available for the particular theme) is presented, followed by the community member perspective and service provider perspective on the issue. At the end of each section, the differences and similarities between the two perspectives are presented and compared to relevant secondary data. Community members and service providers created action steps for many of theses themes at the community meeting. The action steps are addressed in the Community Forum Report section.

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