Abstract
Climate-change-induced disasters such as floods, heavy storms, tornadoes and extreme lightning are becoming more frequent in Africa generally and in South Africa specifically. Several factors contribute to Africa’s high vulnerability to disasters, including the high rate of population growth, food insecurity, high levels of poverty, inappropriate use of natural resources and failures of policy and institutional frameworks. The study adopted an ecological systems theory as a theoretical framework to explain how social work in rural communities deals with climate-change-induced disasters. The aim was to explore and describe the role of social work in the assessment of climate change disaster predicaments. A qualitative approach, utilising an exploratory-descriptive design, was adopted for this study. A purposive sampling technique was used to select five social workers and two social auxiliary workers to participate in the study. Semi-structured interviews were applied in the research as a tool for data collection. Data were analysed qualitatively using thematic content analysis. The research concluded that social workers should intervene in climate-change-induced disasters by conducting assessments and providing disaster intervention strategies.
Highlights
Climate-change-related events have far greater impacts on low- and medium-income countries than on high-income nations (UNISDR 2004)
The findings confirmed that social workers conduct their assessment based on the Department of Social Development’s (DSD) intervention strategy of providing social relief of distress to people affected by natural disasters
The purpose of carrying out social work assessments in any interventions, including disaster interventions, is usually to identify levels of need or risk or to form an understanding when making initial contact with a person affected by natural disaster
Summary
Climate-change-related events have far greater impacts on low- and medium-income countries than on high-income nations (UNISDR 2004). Cities in low- and medium-income countries will be more affected by such events owing to several interrelated hazard and risk factors to which lowincome groups are exposed, as well as their pre-existing vulnerability (Downing & Dow 2006). Rubin (2011) further contends that poor and marginalised communities – who already live in stressed, dangerous and hazardous conditions – would potentially feel the worst effects of long-term changes in weather and increased extreme weather events. To this end, the effects of natural disasters are enormous, causing economic damage and loss of human capability (Collins 2009). The risk factors for people in rural areas who experience natural disasters are physical location, social and cultural aspects, education and information, as well as political will (Davids, Theron & Maphunye 2005)
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