Case Management

Case Management is a service for highly vulnerable client populations to ensure that they receive the help they need within the fragmented american service delivery system. Frankel and Gelman state that the goal is service and coordination, which enables community based assistance to enable impeded persons to live their lives in a natural environment, rather than in an encapsulated institutional one. The role of case managers vary from setting to setting . The role of Case managers as defined by helpworth and larson : Case Managers link clients to resources that exist in complex service delivery networks and orchestrate delivery of services in a timely fashion. Case Managers function as brokers, facilitators, linkers, mediators and advocates. A case manager must have extensive knowledge of community resources, rights of clients and policies and procedures of various agencies and must be skillful in mediation and advocacy.

Barker defined case management as follows: A procedure to plan, seek and monitor services from different social agencies and staff on behalf of a client. Usually one agency takes primary responsibility for the client and assigns a case manager, who co ordinates services, advocates for the client and sometimes controls resources and purchases services for the client. The procedure makes it possible for many social workers in the agency or different agencies, to coordinate their efforts to serve a client through professional team work, thus expanding the range of needed services offered. Case Management may involve monitoring the progress of a client whose needs require the services of many different professionals, agencies,health care facilities and human services program.
ref : The practice of Social WOrk by Charles Zastrow, pg:21

Functions of Case Management

1. Access to the agency
2. intake
3.assessment(psychological, social, medical)
4.goal setting
5. intervention planning
6. resource identification
7. formal linkage
8. informal linkage
9. Monitoring
10. reassessment
11. Outcome evaluation

intermittent functions : 

intra agency coordination, counseling, therapy, advocacy

Clinical Case Management 

clinical case management is an approach to human service delivery that integrates elements of clinical social work and traditional case management practices. it is used primarily with clients having serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, major depression, bipolar, personality and substance abuse disorders. Clinical case management includes following activities within 4 areas of focus:
1. initial phase : engagement , assessment and planning
2. environmental focus : linking with community resources, consulting with families and caregivers, maintaining and expanding social networks, collaboration with physicians, hospitals and advocacy
3. client focus : intermittent individual psychotherapy, independent living skill development, and client psycho education
4. client environment focus : crisis intervention and monitoring

Tasks and activities
Harris and bergman have summarized the therapeutic tasks of clinical case management practice as follows :
1. forging a relationship or making a positive connection with the client
2. modelling healthy behaviors, to facilitate a client's movement from a position of dependancy through one of imitation to an internalization of the case manager's qualities.
3. altering the client's physical environment through process of creation, facilitation and adjustment.

Reference :

Social Workers Desk reference pg 467 covers topics on Case Management in child welfare, psychiatric setting, medical setting, substance abuse, older adults and so on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DvBxSM9Gc8&index=7&list=PL8F2DA860458E1786