Human Resources in Community Services: Conceptual Issues and Empirical Evidence

Abstract

This report has been written in two parts. The first, Sections 2-4, provides a conceptual framework for the analysis of human resources; analyses the data on the trends in the Australian labour market so as to show the trends in the allocation of human resources, in most cases since 1966; it gives a more detailed analysis of the use of human resources in community services; and then examines some data on education, to show how human resources are developed in the education system and the effects of the operation of that system.

The second part, Sections 5-6, examines how human resources are distributed in an urban setting and the effects of this distribution on social structure in terms of class division and socioeconomic stratification. Section 5 presents an overview of literature on the demographic aspects of urban environment and of relevant issues for social policy. Section 6 provides a multivariate analysis of the 1986 census data for the Sydney metropolitan area, using the Local Government Area (LGA) as the unit of analysis. In all, 18 demographic and socioeconomic variables are analysed, with the aim of constructing a 'Vulnerability Index' of the cumulative or compound effects of the spatial distribution of the examined variables. The Index aims to show the extent to which social and economic inequalities are spatially distributed in an urban setting, and then to draw implications of the distribution for governments' policy on the provision of services.

The concluding section (Section 7) presents a discussion on the content of the report, examines theoretical implications of the findings of the study, and then draws out conclusions and implications for social policy and for future research.