Rural social work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic: Findings from a scoping review

Abstract

This paper reports on the findings of a study that involved a scoping review of literature on rural social work published between 2020 and 2024 in high-ranked English-language social work journals listed in the Journal Citation Reports. The study aimed to examine what this published literature had to say about the nature of rural social work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that not only brought unprecedented challenges to rural communities worldwide, but also to rural practice as social workers attempted to address consequential socioeconomic and health-related issues. The huge increase in the literature, from 36 articles between 2009 and 2019, to 116 from 2020 onwards attested to rising interest in rural social work in the post-pandemic period. A thematic analysis of these articles revealed similarities across contexts relating to problem areas and client groups, rural practice and professional challenges. This paper discusses the nature of rural social work as defined by the nature of rural populations and the nature of rural problems and highlights the need for context-specific understanding of rural people's experience. In this way, it contributes to the development of culturally and context-appropriate knowledge, as well as broader understanding of rural social work as a distinct area of professional practice.