“Only thing is, it’s dangerous to believe too much in good fairies and guardian angels.. you get to lean on them too much. You get in the habit of sitting back ad expecting them to do all the work for you. You’ve got to help yourself, you know.”
– The Fairy Godmother to Cinderella in the CBS 1957 version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical, Cinderella
“Case management is perhaps one of the most meaningless of all the terms that get tossed around when a person becomes homeless. As if it were a panacea for all the homeless person’s problems, case management is touted as the medium through which the “consumer” – the accepted term used for the person receiving the case manager’s services – will ultimately make a recovery and return to mainstream society. In the real world, however, it often does not turn out that way. Instead, the consumer often ends up in a hopeless muddle, wishing much like Cinderella for a miracle.
“Case management” is a term devoid of any intrinsic meaning. Case managers are licensed social workers who have varying degrees of credentials and motivation – not always altruistic – for their jobs, who are given a staggering number of cases to oversee. Even the most qualified and highly motivated case manager, given a walloping load of complicated cases that defy solution, can suffer from burnout. This situation is exacerbated by often marginal salaries, the current reality of slashed budgets for social welfare programs, and reduced resources. IN this context, case management is asked to do the impossible.
It is useless to look for someone to blame when the blame is so obviously shared by so many factors along the way. People who still talk as if case management is the magic that will make all the ills go away are hopelessly delusional and, hopefully, will never need the services that they think are out there for the homeless people. They will be in for a rude awakening if they do.
In the real world, those in case management positions often have their own agendas that they follow far more than those of their homeless consumers. The consumer who detects such errant behavior has little choice but to break free of the manager and request a transfer or accept the dictates of a manager who may not be in acting in the consumer’s best interests. It is then that the words of the Fairy Godmother start to ring true: the consumer has to take charge, not expect the case manager to do the work.
Then the question arises: why is the case manager receiving a salary, however meager it may be when the consumer must do the work? That is a question that I have been asking for quite some time. But when things have gone work, the personnel in the Department of Mental Health and the core service agencies have not hesitated to rush forward, wagging accusing fingers at the consumers for not having taken personal responsibility when the case managers were the ones responsible for not behaving responsibly. If the issue is one of expecting a consumer to take more personal responsibility, should it not follow that the consumer be paid the salary? Is this not just another attempt to cut corners on the budget?
I think I know the answer. It’s not a rhetorical question at all; it’s very real. Since I have grievances to file against more than one case manager because of this behavior, I know that I’ll see a lot of people doing a little sidestep now. It will be interesting to watch.
