Services and infrastructure

What is this domain – and what does it tell us about wellbeing?

Every person engages with a range of services and infrastructure on a regular basis throughout their life that are important to their wellbeing. These include education and health services, childcare, healthcare, emergency services such as police and ambulance, roads, telecommunications (phone and internet), amongst a range of others. Poor access to these can lead to challenges in maintaining wellbeing for many people.

This domain examines whether residents of a community can access different types of services and infrastructure. Importantly, access is about more than just the presence of a service of type of infrastructure. To have good access, a service or infrastructure needs to be affordable to use, able to be accessed when needed, and of sufficient quality. Having a local GP clinic in town will provide good access only if local residents can get an appointment without a long wait, can afford the cost of that appointment, and receive good quality healthcare from the clinic. Simply having a road is not enough; the road needs to be safe to use, and ideally useable in all types of weather with few or no closures in emergency events.

Access to services and infrastructure can be measured objectively and subjectively. For example, you might examine average waiting time to see a GP (objective measure) average price of seeing a GP compared to the national average (objective measure), and how satisfied patients are with quality of the care they receive (subjective measure). It is important to identify which services and infrastructure you need to include, and what aspects of their accessibility should be assessed.

Connections to other domains

This domain is rarely included as a specific domain on its own, with many frameworks including access to specific services in the other domains they relate to. For example, education services might be measured as part of Education, knowledge and skills, and health services in a domain focused on Health and healthy lifestyle. However, in many Australian rural communities, maintaining a range of services and infrastructure is a critical factor affecting ability to support resident’s wellbeing and maintain population. This means for some it may be important to include this as a specific domain in its own right.

Indicator options

• Satisfaction with services & infrastructure (availability, accessibility, quality)
  • Aged care, Ability to age in place
  • Health services
  • Emergency services
  • Retail and dining
  • Childcare
  • Telecommunications
  • Local schools
  • Tradespeople
  • Professional services
• Average wait times to access services
• Affordability of services
• Quality of services and infrastructure
• Public infrastructure maintenance and investment