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Geographic Information Systems: A planning tool for human service agencies
Topologically Integrated Geographic and Encoding Reference (TIGER) Line files, which are location based files developed by the U.S Census Bureau have created avenues for applied social scientists such as human service planners to address-match data from administrative record systems with TIGER files and provide spatial support decision on human service management issues (Rushton and Frank, 1995). The availability of digital databases of population census as well as up-to-date and detailed information on the location of infrastructure and administrative boundaries of cities and towns through location based TIGER files whose data are commonly geo-referenced by street addresses and zip codes, have opened doors for human service administrators to use G.I.S technological applications like ArcView and ArcInfo for planning and management of human service delivery. G.I.S technological applications together with census and other digital database information enable human service agencies, both public and private to monitor the effects of policy, planning and delivery of human services that depend on geographically distributed resources organized to meet the needs of geographically dispersed clients.
Relevance of GIS Technology for Human Services
G.I.S technology provides a visually powerful opportunity for human service agencies to analyze social services in relation to its clients and to the communities in which they operate. Knowledge of where people live and work and its relationship with other community parameters such as socio-economic profile, existence of health facilities and schools, language spoken etc., is a powerful analytical tool for planning human service delivery to needy clients. By mapping the location of problems of concern in specific localities, human service agencies can develop service strategies that are sensitive to community needs. G.I.S helps human service agencies to produce meaningful, and attention-grabbing maps, which visually highlight important administrative, policy and practice issues and uncover new insights such as gaps in service delivery and location of facilities in an area of new demand for services.
In the day-to-day practice and management of human service agencies, G.I.S technology serves as a useful tool for:
- obtaining an inventory of the agency’s clientele, services or any other pertinent information
- assessing the demographic profile of its clients
- determining whether the supply of human services in a given community is appropriate and adequate for the target population
- forecasting need/demand for services, given policy changes such as those pertaining to welfare reform
- monitoring emerging trends with respect to demand for services and growth in clientele
- helping agencies with fundraising through visually appealing evidence of need for resources
- determining the locations of new offices for human service agencies, new client groups to be targeted and new services to be offered
- mapping the flow of clients to and from various community services, for example to compute travel times and distance from areas with large concentrations of elderly people to the closest geriatric hospital
- mapping the geographical distribution of various health and social problems to identify areas with greater than expected incidences and their possible relationship to demographic and other factors in the surrounding area and
- making the agency’s services more
attractive and useful to clients and also ensuring efficient
allocation of agency resources
G.I.S technology is extremely relevant for human service applications as human service agencies can use it to forecast need or demand for services by mapping the geographical distribution of various health and social problems, identifying areas in the community with greater expected human service needs and their possible relationship to demographic and other factors in the surrounding area. Using G.I.S technology in conjunction with needs assessment exercises enables visualization of clients’ needs and ensures better program planning for effective service delivery. For instance, G.I.S technology can be useful for caseload management to display geographical locations of target populations including welfare clients, single mothers and elderly individuals living in the community and plan human service programs for them accordingly.
G.I.S technology can be applied for an inventory of neighborhoods with multiple social risk indicators and for locating facilities to provide services designed to address these risks. This software application can be used for an analysis of the match between existing service facilities in the neighborhood and the human service needs and capacities of the residents. Such an analysis with visual displays can be used for guiding location of a facility, public transportation routes, program planning and location based intervention. For example, with maps drawn using G.I.S applications, human service agencies serving welfare clients and the elderly population can plan on efficiently routing welfare clients from their homes to work places and elderly individuals from their homes to hospitals for routine medical appointments.
G.I.S is useful for human service researchers and administrators as it has opened up the possibility of studying small geographic areas such as census tracts or blocks and aggregating them to identify neighborhoods and communities for analysis of human service needs and ensuring better delivery of services. This technology has improved the ability of human service practitioners, planners and researchers to analyze the social environment with a spatial dimension and organize and link datasets (for example by using geocoded addresses or geographic boundaries) to enable provision of cost-effective services to needy clients.
G.I.S mapping is useful in advancing public policy priorities. Regardless of ideology, professionals working in the area of provision of public sector services have a common ground to see literally where a government program is or is not working. Another policy priority that G.I.S technology enables human service professionals to advocate for is the popular push to bring decision-making down the policy hierarchy to the local/community level. A third priority is the empowerment of communities so that a neighborhood with a better grasp of its problems is in a better position to solve them.
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