What are the issues in life whose change has disadvantages?
Answers
This Resource Sheet briefly summarises a number of influential recent approaches to conceptualising and measuring disadvantage. It aims to provide practitioners, service providers and policy-makers with a background on some of the key theoretical and practical tools that currently exist to better understand, and more effectively address, the difficulties faced by many children and families living in disadvantaged Australian communities.
Key messages
Community disadvantage comes about as a result of the complex interplay between the characteristics of residents living in a community (e.g., unemployment, low income) and the effects of the social and environmental context within the community (e.g., weak social networks, relative lack of opportunities).
The idea that economic factors alone are the foundation for advantage and disadvantage undermines the complexity and scope of disadvantage. This view also erroneously implies that economic solutions alone are an adequate response to disadvantage.
A number of new perspectives have recently emerged that highlight the multifaceted nature of disadvantage and demand a more sophisticated response to it.
In addition to theoretical advances, there have also been advances in the measurement of community advantage and disadvantage.
Advances in theoretical understandings and means to measure community disadvantage increase the potential for policy-makers to develop effective public policy. For practitioners, these advances have the potential to enable more in-depth understandings of clients’ needs and experiences.
Disadvantage is not as simple as it was once assumed to be. There is much more to disadvantage than low incomes and high levels of unemployment, as important as these indicators are. In this Resource Sheet, the term "community disadvantage" is used to denote the complex cluster of factors that make it difficult for people living in certain areas to achieve positive life outcomes. Community disadvantage emerges out of the interplay between the characteristics of the residents in a community (e.g., employment, education levels, drug and alcohol use) and, over and above this, the effects of the social and environmental context in which they exist (i.e., "place effects" or "neighbourhood effects", such as weak social networks, poor role models and a relative lack of opportunity) (Edwards, 2005; Vinson, 2007).
Service providers and policy-makers can make a difference in disadvantaged communities. They can improve the lives of children and families who are negatively affected by the area in which they live. There are numerous examples of Australian programs and policies that have effectively ameliorated many of the causes and effects of community disadvantage (for examples, see: Soriano, Clark, & Wise, 2008). The most effective of these responses are built upon a sound and sophisticated understanding of disadvantage. In order to successfully address the problem of community disadvantage, it is first necessary to properly understand it.