Building Human Capital in Families at Risk
This paper reports on research utilising both proximal and distal measurements of aspects of the lives of families. It focuses on proximal measurement of perceptions of safety, trust and collective efficacy within a sample of economically disadvantaged families, living in suburban areas of metropolitan Adelaide. The measurement and discussion of collective efficacy in this study reveals limited levels of informal social control and social cohesion. Families' views of neighbourhood safety and the basis for trusting others in their neighbourhoods are set contextually and within a distal set of measurements about the profile of crime and social disruption according to offences recorded by police. These crime data reveal higher incidence report rates of a range of offences in the neighbourhoods studied and further inform the discussion about low levels of perceived safety and trust. Low levels of civic engagement, the proportion of parents living without another adult in the house, poverty, low human capital and high levels of residential mobility add complexity to the lives of these families. The paper then invokes a further analysis of the contribution of human service workers in supporting the young families living in these suburban spaces.