Environmental Issues in Rural Social Work Practice

Background and Purpose. In the U.S., an estimated 63 million people live in rural communities. Social workers provide vital services in these areas, addressing concerns such as persistent poverty, access to health care, and mental and behavioral health. At the same time, rural communities are increasingly and often disproportionately impacted by environmental issues such as agricultural pollution, flooding, and the impacts of climate change. Further, this tends to occur without commensurate infrastructure or resources to deal with these impacts. Though environmental issues are now recognized as an important area for social work to address, how these issues intersect with rural social work practice remains relatively underexamined. To better understand this nexus and inform future directions, this study asks whether and how environmental issues are surfacing in rural social work practice and impacting clients’ lives.

Methods. Data are from a larger online survey of over 300 social workers in three states, with the subset for this study focusing on rural participants (N=54) in Colorado (n=10), Ohio (n=20), and Tennessee (n=24). For recruitment, the study team contacted social work associations and CSWE-accredited social work programs in the study states and asked that they forward a recruitment email to their members, alumni, and/or field liaisons. The survey consisted of 38 items (e.g., demographics, social work background, current job, environmental issues surfacing in practice) and took approximately 15–20 minutes to complete. Quantitative data were analyzed with descriptive statistics in SPSS. Qualitative responses to open-ended questions were analyzed through two rounds of descriptive and pattern coding in Excel.

Results. Most participants were cisgender women (72.2%), in their early-40s, with an MSW degree (83.3%). The most frequent environmental issues showing up “sometimes” or “often” in practice varied somewhat by state, with the most common being climate change (80.0%), access to local food (80.0%), extreme cold (60%), and extreme heat (60%) in Colorado; access to local food (70.0%), toxic sites (65.0%), and extreme cold (65.0%) in Ohio; and access to local food (70.8%), flooding or heavy rain (50.0%), and extreme heat (41.7%) in Tennessee. Qualitative results suggest the importance of considering local context, potential disruption to client services, compounding effects that further exacerbate social vulnerability, and the multiple impacts on a client’s life that a single environmental event can have.

Conclusions and Implications. Rural social workers, who are already navigating challenging practice circumstances, often with limited resources, are also encountering environmental issues in their practice. Future research with larger, more generalizable samples than those used in this study could provide deeper insight into how different regions of the country are experiencing these issues, enabling more tailored approaches at the local level. Meanwhile, social work education and post-graduate training can ensure that all social workers, and especially those interested in rural practice, are aware of what environmental issues may surface in practice and in what ways, so that assessments with clients and plans for action consider the potential for environmental change and specific events to impact and potentially disrupt clients’ lives.