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Geographic Information Systems: A planning tool for human service agencies
Needs assessment
A central decision for all organizations whether it be governmental agencies, school systems, social service agencies, business corporations, cities, hospitals or universities is what is the best way to apportion available resources, including time, money and organizational efforts to meet the needs of clients they serve. One of the most effective ways to decide on such issues is to conduct needs assessment studies. A needs assessment study is conducted to obtain information to guide policy and program decisions that will benefit specific groups of people (Witkin & Altschuld, 1995). Needs assessment studies use a rational and scientific approach to understand and describe specific areas of need while discovering factors that contribute to the perpetuation of such needs. Such studies also help in devising the criteria for plans to ameliorate the needs. By charting out problems and needs in a community, human service administrators can direct resources to those areas in the community where they would have the most impact.
Policy analysts and program evaluators involved in human services administration are constantly assessing the service needs of citizens in the community through needs assessment studies to formulate or alter their mix of services. Data from such studies can form the basis for guidelines and criteria for planning programs and services to respond to the needs of the community. Unless needs assessment data provide answers to the issue of where and how much of resources are needed in the community, human service planners would not be able to plan for an efficient and effective distribution of preventive services for a brighter future for the communities they serve.
Social service agencies exist within the broader context of a community as represented by their clients. For policy makers and administrators in human services, client population, their socio-economic characteristics and other related criteria pertaining to a community are important aspects for consideration. Therefore, while formulating needs assessment studies human service agencies need to be cognizant of the social and physical contexts of their client’s environment. It is helpful for human service planners to adopt an ecological perspective for assessing the needs of a community whereby clients in that community are viewed as interdependent within their social settings. Such an assessment for determining a community’s needs would contribute to an optimum usage and expansion of the community resources. Community mapping is a crucial part of needs assessment exercises in order to obtain an honest picture about the community. Technological applications provide human service agencies solutions for mapping clients and assessing their needs to plan for effective service delivery.
Technology in Human Service Applications
Human services have not kept pace with emerging information technologies and have traditionally been immune to changes in technological capabilities (O’Looney, 1997). Due to the time lag between the maiden appearance of new technologies in business applications and the period when they trickle down to human service applications, it is common to find human service personnel having limited experience with sophisticated software for analysis and information management purposes. As a result human service agencies today face a big challenge of managing information, such as the ability to easily find pertinent information among volumes of agency data. Consolidated information is critical to helping health and human service agencies successfully improve their service provision and the outcomes of their clients. Technological solutions assist human service agencies to make better-informed decisions, increase their ability to analyze and use information and ultimately improve program effectiveness.
The technological revolution in the last decade has created changes in data analysis and information management impacting research techniques for assessment of human service needs, commonly adopted by government and non-profits including social service agencies. New technologies facilitate rapid gathering and analysis of information from disparate groups of stakeholders involved in human service policy-making and program planning including citizens, human service providers, and funding organizations such as the government.
On the cutting edge of technology are software packages for data management and statistical analysis and new strategies for concept mapping. Easy access to demographical databases such as census and other large databases in conjunction with geographical/spatial analysis technologies such as mapping software help human service agencies better understand location and pattern of human service needs in the community. Technology also helps human service agencies to install management information systems in which data can be entered to furnish a basis for ongoing and future needs assessment studies. These studies enable agencies to spot trends in human service needs in a community. Such technological applications enabling trend analysis of human service needs, signal important changes in existing needs and emergence of new ones, calling for human service program planners to give a careful thought while defining current and future needs for effective service delivery.
There are several technological applications to assist human service organizations in their endeavor to plan and deliver services to the satisfaction of their clients, including Geographic Information Systems (G.I.S). G.I.S technology is useful for human service applications in several ways (Bracken and Webster, 1990) including analysis of social problems, program planning, community policy formulation and actual distribution of services such as transportation.
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