Support to ‘non-clients’: care managers’ role in direct and indirectcarer support
- Författare
- Cristina Joy Torgé, Pia Nilsson, Magnus Jegermalm
- Titel
- Support to ‘non-clients’: care managers’ role in direct and indirectcarer support
- Utgivningsår
- 2024
- Tidskrift
- European Journal of Social Work
- Sidor
- 1-12
- Url
- 10.1080/13691457.2024.2358350
- Nyckelord
- Caregiver, care manager, family carer, needs assessor, street-level bureaucrats
- Sammanfattning
ABSTRACTSocial service provision in Europe has increasingly incorporated informalcarers. Consequently, these carers are now included within the scope ofall social workers, including care managers. Most support for carers isindirect support, where opportunities for respite are channelledthrough the care receiver’s needs assessment. This approach highlightsthe unique role of care managers providing carer support as theybalance their public task directed towards clients with the concurrentpolicy-driven expectation to support carers. The aim of this article is toexplore how care managers, as street-level bureaucrats, ‘make’ carersupport policy on the ground. Using systematic text condensation of 10qualitative interviews with care managers in Sweden, we present threethemes to understand care managers’ experiences. Care managers work‘Hand-in-hand’ and ‘hands on’ with carers, carers are within, yet outsideone’s scope of work, and there are possibilities and practices towards acarer perspective. Following Lipsky’s dictum that street-level bureaucrats’actions effectively ‘become’ the public policy they carry out, our resultshighlight care managers’ possibilities and challenges in shaping whatdirect and indirect carer support looks like on the ground.