Social Sustainability through a Rural Mobile Field Education Unit
The NSW Department of Community Services (Western Region) is 70%of the land mass of NSW, has about 600000 people, has 14000 child abuse reports per year, serves a variety of rural and remote communities and has over 1000 children in Out of Home Care. The area has high rates of social exclusion on a variety of factors outlined in the paper.
Charles Sturt University and the Department of Coimmunity Services, as a collaborative venture, have developed and implimented a Mobile Student Social Work Unit with specific aims in respect of addressing needs of children in out of home care and carers in rural and remote areas of Western NSW. The paper reports on the unequal access of people in rural and remote areas and an innovative attempt to address at least one area of that disadvantage.
The paper will focus upon an Education theme (Group 6) but ineveitably addresses issues of Social Sustainability (Group 8, Exclusion (Group 7) and capacity building (Group 1).
The paper describes a practical, outcome-focussed and constructive attempt to bring capacity building, sustainability and need (social exclusion) together using social work field education as the key.