Social problem:
Social Organization
Teen pregnancy in rural areas
- Rural communities remains the site of the nation's most intense and persistent poverty.
- Rural social work practice contributes to the social work mission of advocating for social justice and extending access to services for under-size populations
- Social networks in rural communities are more personalized and informal than those typically found in urban communities.
- Rural social workers interact with clients and their families in variety of ways, such as at schools, churches, sport events, or fundraisers.
- Rural communities make up much of America's heartland
- People in rural communities experience lower income levels, higher unemployment, and higher poverty rates than people in urban areas.
- The success or failure of community residents usually is attributed to personal effort and motivation.
- The poor, unemployed, and downtrodden are viewed as lacking the determination to achieve.
Cultural Diversity in Rural Areas
- About 78% of the population in small town and rural communities are non-hispanic and white, compared to 64% of the population in this nation as a whole. (prb.org)
- African Americans were a big minority group in small towns and rural communities in the year 2000. In 2010 hispanics compromise 9.3% of the rural population. (prb.org)
- 77.8% white/not hispanics total rural and small town population. (ruralhome.org)
- 1.9 million - increase in the number of rural and small town hispanics between 2000 and 2010. (ruralhome.org)
- 53.8% percent of the nation's native americans that reside in rural and small town areas. (ruralhome.org)
- Child abuse is increasingly being found in rural areas, when it was once thought to be a Urban problem
- People of color are at a higher risk to live in poverty compared to whites.
- There is a higher rate of the inabilty to have enough food to feed everyone in the family each meal, especially in the south.
Social Work in Rural Areas
BY Amber, Jenny, Sarah, Kristan, and Darren
What is a Rural Area?
There is only about 19% of the country that is Rural.
Rural areas are areas that are populated with less than 2,500 people, and consists of mostly small towns, ranches, and farms.
Apporximatley 50 Million people in America live in rural areas in the U.S.
The economy of Rural areas is no longer dominated by agriculture, but is dominated by industries
Problems with Rural settings
- There is the ability for some residents of rural populations to reach the help they need, but depending on location some cities are too far away for someone to reach the proper help they may require.
- There are also problems receiving help because the income tends to be low; with high poverty rates
- Hospitals lack enough funds to provide necessary care which leads to residents needing to drive a long distance to receive the better quality of care.