Abstract: Amid drastic rural population flow and family changes, the issues of disability, poverty and aging are often intertwined in rural China, which has become one of major challenge of anti-poverty campaign and rural development. Based on the social work practice research in Beicun, Shaanxi Province, it is found that the current rehabilitation services for the disabled is dominated by the medical model. Community rehabilitation is to a large extent a simple extension of medical services in the community, ignoring the impact of family care deficit on the accessibility and effectiveness of rehabilitation services for the disabled. The social work service of Beicun focuses on the issue of care support for the disabled. Through the empowerment and reconstruction of care relations within the family, between families and community support, the program promotes the development of a more comprehensive and sustainable community rehabilitation. Beicun’s practice can be summarized as a relationship-based care empowerment model, which contains the practical characteristics of ethic sensitivity, differential level of association and service integration. Although it is still faced with the structural constraints as a service program, this practice has good implications for the development of rural social work in the context of urban and rural transformation in China.

Key words: care, practice research, empowerment, community rehabilitation, rural social work