Family and Community Resource Management
This unit tests the classification of resources, the management process, the steps of decision making, and practical tools for managing time, energy and money.
Resources
- Human: time, energy, knowledge, skills, attitudes, interests, abilities.
- Non-human: money, goods, land, house, equipment, community facilities.
- Characteristics: useful, scarce, limited, manageable and substitutable - a pressure cooker substitutes for fuel and time.
The management process
Planning (set goals, list resources, choose a plan), implementing (organising, dividing work, directing), controlling (checking progress) and evaluating (was the goal met?). Management is a cycle, not a single act.
Decision making in six steps
Define the problem; list alternatives; examine the cost and consequence of each; choose; act; evaluate the outcome. Values, goals and standards guide every step - a vegetarian household, a fixed income and a preference for home-cooked food all change what counts as the best choice.
Time, energy and money
- Time plan: separate flexible from inflexible tasks, manage peak load, and apply work simplification - eliminate, combine, rearrange, simplify.
- Ergonomics and motion economy: work at correct height, store frequently used items between shoulder and hip level, use both hands.
- Money: budget (balanced, surplus, deficit), records, savings, insurance, avoiding impulse buying. Consumer education links directly here.
Worked example
A working couple with two school-going children wants to save 40 minutes of kitchen time daily. Answer: identify inflexible tasks (breakfast at 7.30), simplify (soak dal and cut vegetables once), combine (plan rice and dal in one cooking session), rearrange (pack tiffin the previous night), then evaluate by recording an actual time plan for one week and comparing.
Traps
- Treating money as the only resource.
- Presenting a budget with no evaluation stage.
- Reducing management to "planning" alone.
- Ignoring community facilities as a resource.