Community Counts: Rural Social Work in East Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper presented is magnificent. I found it extremely interesting. The contextualisation is very well constructed and very useful. The authors do an excellent job of enabling the reader to understand the terminology of the interviewees. This effort should certainly be acknowledged. I found it exciting to learn more about the social mechanisms of the regions studied.

The only problem I find is the link between the methodology and the results. The methodology states that 155 qualitative interviews and 55 focus group 193 discussions were conducted, but this information is not well translated into the results. These results are narrative and comprehensive in nature, but it would be good if examples of some of the transcripts could be included. It would also be good to introduce an outline of the thematic elements present in the discourse of the interviews and focus groups. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a very interesting article that examines the role of indigenous models of care and social welfare provision to rural regions in five countries in East Africa. The rationale for the inquiry is clearly established and the literature review covers the major issues in a clear and compelling manner. Perhaps further clarity for the statement on Page 2 Line 48-50

What is the population of rural residents—it might be 20% or less which might mean the coverage is the same as rural residents. The majority of social work interventions are focussed on urban or peri-urban locations (79.2%); only one fifth (20.8%) of organisations employing social workers concentrate their activities explicitly on rural contexts

The methodology is very sparse, further details regarding the samples would be beneficial, including the number of focus group participants, demographics of participants (age, gender, etc), number of participants in each country, are all of the respondents rural residents? The findings portray indigenous examples of ubuntu across each of the three settings. Given the large numbers of participants, identifying the relative proportion of respondents who identified these concepts would be helpful. The authors also should clarify if study participants used the term ‘ubuntu’ or if the association to this concept was made by the researchers. The critique of the concept of ubuntu in maintaining power relations was helpful. It is unclear why the two case examples from Burundi were chosen, more details would be helpful t support this decision. The conclusion should clarify the utility of ubuntu as a concept for the delivery of social welfare, etc. in rural communities in the five countries and clarify the role of social workers in this process. The authors should also present the study limitations.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf