Localising Human Services

Description

A History of Local Government Human Services in Victoria

Victoria led the way in Australia with the idea of localising human services. Victorian local government progressively became the most effective structure for delivering, coordinating and planning health, housing, cultural, recreational and social welfare services. However, local government has not been able to provide a stable, evenly-spread human services’ system.

Robert Lowell examines the constraints on local government that arise from complex inter-governmental power relations in Australia. He also offers the first history of local government human services in Victoria from settlement to the present day.

For those who provide human services, and for students and teachers of service provision, this is a valuable book. It adds to the sparse literature on the history, policy and practice of human services and includes an extensive bibliography.

Dr Robert Lowell worked for thirty-four years in the human services sector in Victoria and was a pioneer in the development of rural local government human services. He is a Research Associate with the Institute for Regional Studies at Monash University.