RWB & Associates - Social Planners

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Social Planning within a healthy communities framework is

the process of investigating and responding to the needs and aspirations of the people who live or work in a community.
people-focussed while urban or environmental planning is place-focussed, but clearly there are strong links. Social Planning is a vital input into urban and environmental planning, particularly in examining the social and health impacts of possible changes to the built environment.

Social planning tasks frequently involve planning for community services and facilities, contributing to environmental and physical planning, and investigating the impacts that major projects, programs and/or developments would have on a community.

Within the Social Planning Consultancy the following key products and services will be delivered

Community Consultation

Community consultation is a way in which communities can participate and become involved. Consultation is a powerful process, where a variety of techniques may be used throughout the entire process of development, change, or evaluation of an organisation. It is one of many cooperative practices an organisation or group may engage in with their constituents or clients.

Social/Community Planning

A social/community plan describes the local community, summarises the key issues facing the community, formulates recommended strategies which government and/or agencies could implement to address identified needs, and informs a Strategic Planning process across a range of functions. It usually incorporates a community profile and a set of recommended strategies.

Population Planning

Population planning is planning for the aged, families, ethnic communities, aboriginal community, youth etc. It requires description of that population group within a community, summarising the key issues and formulating recommended strategies.

Service Planning

Service Planning is the recommendation and/or development of services for Greenfield or other infill development, or particular population groups – e.g. early intervention programs for families, better transport services for elderly etc.

Social planners are often asked questions about matters such as:

What facilities a new urban area will require
Where a new child care centre should be located
Whether an area should have an information service

Strategic Planning

Social planning operates in an environment of resource scarcity, for it deals with questions about which needs are greatest – which should be met, and which not. Social planning involves making choices.

Strategic Planning is an approach to the process of managing changing. Its central characteristics are: assessing the current environment, identifying trends and critical issues; developing goals and objectives; setting priorities; developing strategies for key issues, and developing key performance indicators.

Social or Health Impact Assessments

Social impacts are focussed on the human dimension of environments. They attempt to answer the question: What are the impacts of a project or development on people? Or who benefits and who loses?

The impacts on a community might include:

Changes in the composition of the community
Effects on movement patterns and interactions
Influences on behaviour patterns
Effects on community services and facilities

Social impacts are basically ‘people impacts’ rather than ‘environmental impacts’.

The fundamental objective is to improve people’s quality of life and social well being and to ensure they are not compromised in the future by decisions made today.

Social Research

Research is fundamentally about understanding and explaining, – about ‘knowing’ – the consultancy will basically operate within a qualitative framework with quantitative analysis as a support.

It is a process which begins with people asking questions, then setting out to answer them – systematically and rigorously collecting observations and generating an explanation about how and why such is the case.

Program/Project Evaluation

The main purposes of evaluating a local program or project are:

To assess its impact on the problem being addressed;
To suggest ways of managing the project more effectively;
To identify good practice for wider dissemination;
To report back accurately to partners, local community members and the funders on the projects achievements

Specifically:

Measuring the extent to which defined goals and objectives have been achieved.
Assessing the process and impact of initiatives and their contribution to achieving desired outcomes.
Measuring changes in the social, economic and information environment as a basis for understanding the impact of the projects.
Providing feedback for future project management purposes.