ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the constraints that beset the delivery of rural services time, distance, and dispersed populations and look at ways that these can be overcome. In the early 1900s Britain became an urban nation when, for the first time for any country, more people lived in cities than in the countryside. This was the long-term result of the population shift arising from the industrial revolution that had begun in the late eighteenth century. The move to the city of course had profound consequences for the countryside; indeed the changes unleashed continue to impact rural life. The chapter discusses these changes in recent years and the distinctively rural forms of exclusion created in their wake. Tackling social exclusion in rural areas will in practice follow many of the approaches in urban-based social work. The exclusion of adult service users can in part be overcome by linking the objectives of social care with those of community development.
