Abstract
Since the social service consists of diverse types in terms of the service user and contents, and also the sizes of the demand and situations of supply for social services might be different in regional scale, the discussion of proper providing environment should be differentiated both by service types and by regional scale. This is why the localization of social services is coming to the fore as an important policy issue. In the present study, attempts were made to analyze the present situation of social service provision to determine what service provision environment is shown by type of social services and how the environment appear differently by regional scale. Korean social services can be mainly divided into five types (counseling and rehabilitation, adult care, child care, education and information, and job searching). Service-provision environments were identified with public financing methods for service, the characteristics of service agencies, and whether competing agencies existed, and if that, what the number of competing agencies are. According to the results, the social service-provision environment and the characteristics of service agencies were significantly different among the five major types of social services and also clearly showed differential tendencies according to regional scales.
