Geographic Information Systems: A planning tool for human service agencies  Gokul Mandayam Ph.d Student School of Social Work, College of Public Programs Arizona State University gokul110@imap3.asu.edu Introduction Human service organizations ultimately aim at evaluating, producing or delivering some type of goods or services to people in the community (Chisholm, 1995). Allocating human service resources to needy communities and populations in fast changing multi-cultural urban regions is becoming a major challenge for both public and private sector human service organizations. In order to achieve this objective of effective production and distribution of goods and services, it is necessary to have a detailed picture of the target population and access to appropriate and timely demographic and socio-economic data pertaining to that population. With this information, public and private sector human service organizations can make decisions in the best interests of the citizens/communities they serve. Health and human service agencies today are faced with tough challenges in raising funds for program planning and service delivery. This is reflected in terms of government’s increasing focus on performance and outcome management requiring agencies to produce measurable program improvements, and in some cases even making a tangible change in the lives of their clients. Funding organizations and service beneficiaries increasingly require that policy decisions be backed by information indicating that such decisions result in efficient and effective distribution of human service resources. Human service agencies are beginning to realize that better fundraising and well-informed policy decisions on health and human service needs of communities are possible through better information management that help them collect, analyze and display evidence of the need for resources in the community. Mapping communities is an important information management strategy, which results in a geographical organization of resources and assets of the community while being sensitive to the community’s needs as identified by agency exercises such as needs assessment. This paper discusses the utility of G.I.S technology for the human service profession. A demonstration project on the use of G.I.S software, ArcView 3.2a, for assessing the social service needs of elderly individuals residing in Maricopa County, Arizona, is described as an example of the practical application of G.I.S technology for planning human services. Importance of Spatial Context An effective approach in human services planning for catering to the needs of the client community calls for comprehensive mapping of the community’s social reality (O’Looney, 1997). A multidimensional mapping of the communities that human service agencies serve in terms of their physical and social environments offers immense support to community development efforts. Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) social ecology model stresses the importance of the environmental context in human development. His model focuses on the individual in a societal context. It includes the person, his/her environment and the evolving interaction between the person and the environment. In his theory of the ecology of human development, Bronfenbrenner postulates “enabling individuals in the society to function in an increasingly chaotic environment requires that the principles of human ecology be understood and incorporated into public policy.” (Henderson, 1995, P.17). The social ecology system as propounded by Bronfenbrenner is very useful in understanding the needs of human service clients within the context of their community’s physical and social environments. Mapping communities is therefore an integral component of human services planning. While mapping communities, it is important to include not only the physical/surface geography of communities but also their social geography. Neighborhood maps as an example of social geography, is a very useful tool for human service planners for visualizing the impact of social and economic factors existing in a community. Dynamic mapping techniques are helpful for human service planners to understand the relationships between various factors in a community such as physical characteristics, socio-economic characteristics and primary language spoken etc., and strategically plan the optimal usage of resources to cater to the community’s needs. Thus mapping can transform the way social programs and services are designed and carried out, thereby contributing to effective social policy development. Recent research has indicated that precursors to social problems are heavily concentrated in particular neighborhoods (Figuera-McDonough, 1995), which emphasizes the necessity for human service planners to recognize and focus on the importance of geographical location effects. Spatially differentiated social, economic and political processes have a major impact on the intensity of human capital and social capital development within communities. Therefore, spatial characteristics of a community are important considerations while assessing human service needs of that community. Territorially defined communities act as a container for and potentially provide critical incubators of diverse social, economic and political components and processes relevant to human capital formation. A geographic component in human service research endeavors such as needs assessment studies, has enormous intellectual potential to foster better understanding of the community’s needs in terms of social, economic, and political processes to facilitate successful interventions for improvements in human environments.
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