The Discussion of Potential Care Needs for Physically and Mentally Disabled Citizens in Taipei City by Using Spatial Analysis

• Main Authors: Jui-Hung Kao, Wei-Chen Wu, Chen-Hu Chou, Horng-Twu Liaw
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: social welfare agencies; disabled people; weighted population center points; relaxed variable kernel density estimator
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/5/2665

What this research may achieve points towards the need to progressively improve the reasonableness in establishing Social Welfare Agencies (SWAs). The service capacity of SWAs is far below the population of the level III extremely disabled. This is a serious problem. This evaluation can assist social welfare and public health departments to determine what locations to approve for establishing SWAs in the short term and plan for new SWAs more precisely, as well as rein in budgetary priorities. As an illustration, in considering the distance between SWAs and the extremely disabled, the service quality of SWAs and fairness in the planning have to be taken into account. Introducing a Service Quantity Needed-Index for SWAs (SNIS) into the current measure of approving and planning new SWAs shall assist the departments in distributing social welfare resources to areas most in need of help. In addition, using the modified data to recalculate SNIS can examine needs regularly. Employing basic statistical areas for short-term applications in Taipei City SWA projects, considering the distance between SWAs and the extremely disabled, the agencies’ service quality and fairness in the planning of SWAs need to receive more attention. Previous research mostly employed straight-line distances rather than road distances. To a certain extent, this overlooked the actual capacity of roads as well as led to some degree of discrepancies in evaluations. This essay focuses on calculating SNIS, mainly towards guiding the establishment of facilities and concretely proposing how to optimize their locations. Future research can add in needs at that time in accordance with current evaluation results to propose plans to optimize the locations, or maybe integrate weights of disability to adjust multiple requirements of SWAs.