Rural Social Policy

This chapter identifies several frameworks underlying rural social policies. It presents a framework for examining rural social care within the broader context of managed, sustainable regional change. Rural targeting responds to the distinctiveness of rural contexts and rural needs. Rural people and social care practitioners move constantly through a sea of complex horizontal and vertical interdependencies. Rural communities exist as does the wider world and deal with each other they must. Community development has been undergoing a minor resurgence in rural areas. Rural social care practitioners, whether they are involved in direct practice, social planning, community development or management do, indeed, stand at the intersection of horizontal and vertical processes. Australian social care policies focus primarily on individuals and families, rarely on whole communities. Good social development generates community cohesion, involvement and commitment which can flow over to economic initiatives.