The changing distribution of Melbourne's aged population: patterns and implications

Abstract

The pattern of provision of community services and accessibility to them in different parts of the city has been investigated in several recent geographical studies; for Australian cities, the major focus has been concentrated on educational facilities, health services and welfare organisation (McLelland, 1968;Barrett, 1973;Adams and Tilse, 1974;Donald, 1975;Freestone, 1975). Of the many issues raised, two are of particular relevance to the aged. Firstly, accessibility considerations are perhaps more important for the aged than for any other group, because of their limited personal mobility and the progressive decline in access to goods, services and social contacts which accompanies and accelerates the process of growing old (Peet and Rowles, 1977, p. 288). Secondly, the aged will experience varying problems in the different social and physical environments of the urban area, and by indicating shortcomings in these environments, support strategies based on preventative measures can be developed.Two recent Australian Government reports on the care of the aged stress approaches that aim to maintain the elderly at home in the community (Social Welfare Commission, 1975; Holmes Committee, 1977). Domiciliary services and community care programmes are proposed as the primary means of achieving these goals. The spatial distribution of the aged can be taken as expressing, albeit in a very simple way, the pattern of demand to which the supply of such services must respond. The present study aims to link an analysis of the age structure of the city to the assessment of the communities and environments in which the aged live.Concern for a particular age group and their needs has not normally been a central theme of analyses of age structure within the city, which have rather been set in the context of explaining urban growth and structure. From Morris's ( 1 976) study of residential differentiation in Melbourne it can readily be seen that the character of life in an urban community is to a very considerable degree a function of its demographic character, and the potential of age structure as a planning tool has been noted (Curson, 1967;Coulson, 1968). A sharpened focus on the aged suggests that the tendency for increasing social segregation and isolation accompanies increasing residential segregation "Ms Howe is a Senior Tutor in Geography at Monash University. This article is a revised version of a paper presented at

The impact of centralisation upon geographical variations in the provision of aged care services: a comparison of outcomes in Melbourne and Adelaide

“…Under this programme there have been redistributions of resources between regions in Adelaide to achieve a pattern which accords more closely with the estimated needs of areas for these services. Continued monitoring of these needs is important because the ageing of the Australian population structure combined with retirement migration is likely to alter the distribution of needs within urban areas in the future (Howe, 1978;Hugo, 1983). The HACC programme in Adelaide also involves an attempt to extend services to the non-English speaking aged and the programme is also taking effect in other states.…”