Case Management

Generalist Social Work

• Resource Provider - Engages in the provision of whatever material and
other concrete resources that are needed to eliminate or reduce
deficiencies in the client’s situation
• Social Broker - Connects the client to all services or resources that he/she
needs which are not administered by the SW’s agency but are available in
other agencies in the community
 Generalist Social Work
• Enabler - Undertakes interventive activities that will help client find
strengths and resources within himself/herself to solve the problem
Differs from role as counselor/therapist – enabling is used with client
that already has personal strengths and resources, whether within the
client or the environment, that need to be mobilized for client’s use to
bring about change
 Generalist Social Work
• Counselor/Therapist - Engages in an approach that help maintain or
enhance client’s capacity to cope with his/her reality through efforts
focused on the client; i.e., emotional support; clarification; self-
understanding; guidance and other techniques
• Mediator - Mediates or conciliates between two parties (i.e. the client and
another system) who are involved in a conflict or dispute in order to
resolve this or find some common ground between them
 Generalist Social Work
• Advocate - SW takes partisan interest in the client and will argue, defend,
bargain, negotiate and even use non-consensual strategies like direct
confrontation and administrative appeals to influence another party
(usually with some power or authority over the client) in the client’s
interest
 Functions of Social Work
1. Developmental
2. Preventive
3. Restorative
 Developmental
• to seek out, identify and strengthen the maximum potential in individuals,
groups and communities. The aim is both to help the individual make
maximum use of his potentials and capacities as well as to further the
effectiveness of available social or community resources. 
• Examples of developmental function would include helping unemployed
and underemployed breadwinners to avail themselves of opportunities for
skills training while at the same time providing necessary supportive
services.
 Preventive
- to identify potential areas of disequilibrium between individuals or
groups and the environment in order to prevent occurrence of
disequilibrium. This involves early discovery, control and
elimination of those conditions or situations which may have a
harmful effect on social functioning. 
• Examples of this function include counseling on premarital and
other family problems, sex education of youth to prevent early
marriage, sexual abuse; and working for the enactment of laws and
policies that would help prevent abuse of women and children.
 Restorative
• Restorative/curative/remedial/rehabilitative functions - to assist
individuals and groups to identify and resolve or minimize problems
arising out of disequilibrium between themselves and the environment. 
• curative aspect - seeks to remove factors which have caused the
breakdown in the person's social functioning. 
• rehabilitative aspect - tries to put back the person to a normal or healthy
state of social functioning. 
 Restorative
• One example for curative aspect is helping a girl who engages in
prostitution for a living to change her ways through counseling
relationship and effecting necessary changes in her home or
environmental conditions. the rehabilitative aspect could involve helping
her avail herself of opportunities for schooling, skills training, and
legitimate employment. 
 Case Management
• skill in social work intervention

• an approach to service delivery

• uses the helping process

 Case Management
• is a way of delivering services where a social worker assumes
responsibility for assessing with a client what services he needs, and helps
obtain those services for the client. (Mendoza 2002)
• A procedure to plan, seek & monitor services from different social
agencies & staff on behalf of a client. Usually one agency takes primary
responsibility for the client and assigns a case manager, who coordinates
services, advocates for the client, & sometimes controls resources &
purchase services for the client. (Barker 2003)
 To understand the individual, we should consider his/her context:

• “Individuals exist within families

• Families exist within communities and neighborhood
• Individuals, families, and neighborhood exist in a political,
economic, and cultural environment
• The environment impacts the actions, beliefs, and choices of
the individual
 Case Management
• a service delivery system that organizes, coordinates and
sustains a network of formal and informal supports and
activities designed to optimize the functioning and well-being of
people with multiple needs. (Moxley 1989)
• Social work case management is a method of providing services
whereby a professional social worker assesses the needs of the
client and the client’s family, when appropriate, and arranges,
coordinates, monitors, evaluates and advocates for a package of
multiple services to meet the specific client’s complex needs.
(NASW)
 Theoretical Perspectives in SW Case
Management
• Ecosystem perspective – this perspective examines the exchanges between
individuals, families, groups and communities and their environment. This
encourages matching people as much as possible with their environments
• Ecology: “the science concerned with the adaptive fit of organisms and
their environments , and with the means by which they achieve a dynamic
equilibrium and mutuality” (Germain,1973)
 Ecological Framework
• Micro level - individual’s personality, motivation, feelings and other
personal characteristics

• Meso level - context immediately surrounding the client e.g. family,

church/peer group

• Macro level - society’s characteristics, e.g political system, educational

system,etc
 International
community

macro
nation

meso

family community
person
e

micro
 Strengths Perspective
• This emphasizes affirming and working with clients strengths and the
resources available in their environment. It stresses basic dignity and the
client’s ability to overcome challenging obstacles
 6 Key Principles of Strengths Perspective
(Saleebey)
1. Every individual, group, family and community have strengths. SWs must
view clients as competent and possessing skills and strengths that may not
be initially visible. SWs should also explore useful resources in client
families and communities
2. Trauma and abuse, illness, and struggle are challenging, but they may also
present opportunities. Clients can not only overcome difficult situations but
also learn new skills and develop positive protective factors. Individuals to a
variety of trauma are not always helpless victims or damaged beyond repair
 6 Key Principles of Strengths Perspective
(Saleebey)
3. Assume that you do not know the upper limits for clients’ capacity to grow and
change and take individual, group and community aspirations seriously. Too often
professionals hinder their clients’ potential for growth by viewing client’s identified
goals as unrealistic. Instead, SWs need to set high expectations for their clients so
that clients believe they can fully recover and that they can achieve their goals.
4. We best serve clients by collaborating with them. Playing the role of expert or
professionals with all the answers does not allow SWs to appreciate their client’s
strengths and resources. The strengths perspective emphasizes collaboration
between SW and client
 6 Key Principles of Strengths Perspective
(Saleebey)
5. Every environment is full of resources. Every community regardless of
how impoverished or disadvantaged, has something to offer in terms of
knowledge, support, mentorship and resources
6. Caring, caretaking and context. The strength perspective recognizes the
importance of community and the inclusion of all its members in
society and working for social justice. This principle is premised on the
idea that caring for each other is a basic form of civic participation
 Strengths Perspective
• Focuses on client’s personal assets along with their environmental
resources rather than on their pathology and limitations.
• It does not preclude the need to validate the suffering and pain of the
client nor the seriousness of the situation or distress.
• It seeks to acknowledge clients’ expertise regarding their own lives and to
focus on their resilience and capacities to survive and confront seemingly
overwhelming obstacles.
 Rights based perspective
• Provides grounding for social work practice and reflects an ongoing
commitment to the belief that all people should have basic rights and
access to the broad benefits of their societies.
• ….a right can be enforced before the government and entails an obligation
on the part of the government to honor it
 The Process of Case Management
ASSESSMENT PLANNING IMPLEMENTATION

Initial Contact Planning & Service Provision

Intake Contracting & Monitoring

Arranging
Data Collection Services: Evaluation &
& Assessment Referral Termination
Network

Problem Intervention Problem

Identification Plan Resolution
 Assessment
1. Initial contact – how did the clients reach the SWs attention (referral, walk-in or
worker reached out to the potential client
1. Intake interview is conducted to determine the capacity of the agency to respond to the clients
needs. This is the stage that a client achieves client status, that is if based on the matching
between the agency resources and the client’s needs it was determined that the agency can
respond to the identified needs
2. Data collection and assessment
1. Data collection – data could be gathered from primary source (client), secondary sources (family
members, friends, and other significant others of the client, from existing data (records from
other agencies, psycho eval or other records the client has and from client’s own observation