Rural social work: practices and organisation. A case study in Andalusia (Spain)

ABSTRACT

The practice of social work in rural settings represent a specific challenge for the profession although this subject has received very little attention in the European literature. In contrast to urban settings, social work in rural areas is conditioned by organisational circumstances and specific socio-cultural contexts, which require reflection on the possible specificity of professional practice in these areas. The purpose of this article is to analyse the organisational models and practices of rural social work in order to explore that potential peculiarity and its implications in social intervention. This article presents part of the results of a broader research endeavour, focusing on an exploratory case study in Andalusia (Spain), where we carried out qualitative research in public social services centres to study in depth the characteristics of the organisation and practices of social workers. The conclusions reached point to the existence of an urbanormative bias in the organisation and practices of social work, which masks rural specificities (the relational social work and the generalist model of organisation) and could condition the response capacity of social workers to tackle the rural crisis.

RESUMEN

La práctica del trabajo social en entornos rurales es un reto muy importante para la profesión; sin embargo, este es un tema que ha recibido muy poca atención en la literatura europea. A diferencia de los ámbitos urbanos, el trabajo social en el medio rural está condicionado por circunstancias organizativas y contextos socioculturales particulares, que obligan a reflexionar sobre la posible especificidad de la práctica profesional en estas zonas. El propósito de este artículo es analizar los modelos organizativos y las prácticas del trabajo social rural para explorar esa posible peculiaridad y sus implicaciones en la intervención social. Este texto presenta parte de los resultados de una investigación más amplia, centrada en un estudio de caso exploratorio en Andalucía (España), donde realizamos una investigación cualitativa en centros públicos de servicios sociales para profundizar en las características de la organización y las prácticas de los trabajadores sociales. Las conclusiones obtenidas apuntan a la existencia de un sesgo urbanormativo en la organización y prácticas del trabajo social, que enmascara las especificidades rurales (el trabajo social con enfoque relacional y el modelo generalista de organización) y que podría condicionar la capacidad de respuesta de los trabajadores sociales para afrontar la crisis rural.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work
• practices
• organisation
• rural
• Spain

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• trabajo social
• prácticas
• organización
• rural
• España

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Codes identify a professional's testimony and work centre, “r” means rural context, “u” urban context, “M” manager, and “SW” social worker.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Consejería de Igualdad, Políticas Sociales y Conciliación. Junta de Andalucía: [grant number 1600010000 G/31G/44100/00 01].

Notes on contributors

Esteban Ruiz-Ballesteros

Esteban Ruiz-Ballesteros (PhD) is Professor of Social Anthropology at Pablo de Olavide University in Seville (Spain). He is a member of the department of Social Anthropology, Psychology and Public Health and the Social Research and Participatory Action Group (GISAP). His current research fields are social intervention processes and social services, community-based tourism and environment-human relationships, carrying out fieldwork in Andalusia, Ecuador, and the Galapagos. His recent work has been published in Sociologia Ruralis, Journal of Rural Studies, Human Ecology, Land Use Policy, Human Organization, Tourism Management, Journal of Material Culture, AIBR, and Disparidades.

Auxiliadora González-Portillo

Auxiliadora González-Portillo, PhD in Social Sciences. Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Work and Social Services at the Pablo de Olavide University (Seville). Her main lines of research are social intervention with vulnerable and excluded groups, public policies on social services and the work of NGOs. She always develops her research from a participatory qualitative methodological approach. She is member of the Social research and participatory action group (GISAP). His recent work has been published in Poverty and Public Policy, International Journal for Equity in Health, Journal of Regional Research, European Journal of Public Health, Sustainability, and Empiria.

José Alberto Salinas-Pérez

Jose A. Salinas-Perez (PhD) is a Research Associate Professor at the Department of Quantitative Methods of Loyola University (Spain). He is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the College of Health & Medicine (Australian National University), and at the Faculty of Medicine (University of Canberra). He holds Master’s Degrees in Geographic Information Systems and in urban and regional planning. He teaches Statistics in the Business, Economics and Engineering Degrees in his university. He is a geographer specialised in Health Geography, Geo-statistics, Decision Support Systems for health policy, and Service Research. Thus, he has participated in different national and international research projects, including social and health service evaluation, Integrated Atlases of Mental Health, development of health indicators, technical efficiency assessment of services and health catchment areas, spatial data analysis and spatial epidemiology. These projects have produced high impact scientific publications and technical reports for social and health agencies. Thus, he has a H-index score of 13 and more than 50 indexed articles (Web of Science).