To Coordinate Information in Practice: Dilemmas and Strategies in Care Management for Citizens with Dementia

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study, based on 19 interviews with care managers, explores the experiences of care-managers involved in assessing the need for social services for people with dementia. The study shows that social workers, as care managers, face several dilemmas in their practice concerning people with dementia, in relation to the exchange of information and in regards to conflicting interests between different actors involved in the assessment of the need for support for people with dementia. Strategies used to handle problematic situations that arise in their work are using other sources for information (e.g., relatives and actors from other professions), persuading, and pursuing creative forms of consent. However, the study shows that dilemmas and strategies used generate other, prominently moral, dilemmas for care managers in their practice, which relate to participation and self-determination by the person with dementia. The study shed light on the problematic situation for care managers in their work to coordinate information and further the new “realities“ that they encounter as well as on how to handle these new situations. This study suggests possible ways to improve the everyday work of care managers, as well as how policies concerning social work and people with dementia can be improved.

KEYWORDS:

• Care management
• citizenship
• dementia
• social policy
• social work

Funding

The research in this article was supported by a grant from the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.