What is Case Management?

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Your questions are interesting and I am glad to discuss my knowledge and personal experiences with you. I will go through each question and provide you some of my insight as to the content of the questions. I am glad you have chosen BrainMass to assist you in this request and hope that you find the following information helpful. I have various experiences in all types of case management, human services, and social work fields.

The first question that you are asking is regarding client-driven goals and provider-driven goals. I would encourage you to think about this question in terms of placing yourself in each of the scenario's shoes. For example, if you were a client and had to work through a case plan to get back custody of your children from a child welfare situation, what would be your goals? Your goal, I'm only assuming would be to "get back your children". So, the client-driven goals in a small scenario like that would be to get back whatever it is that you lost, however, when you are a provider, the goals are different. Yes, you can imagine that a provider would have the same goal, "get the children back home", but how would you explain that goal and contrast the two? Perhaps you would explain the mission of the organization, the vision of the organization, as well as adding your personal "hopes" for the case. In any situation, the goals of the client should be fairly similar to the goals of a provider, but the approach to the two and the way of thinking about the two are different.

I will share with you an example of differences in client-driven goals and provider-driven goals. When I was a case worker for the child welfare arena, the goals in the case plan were developed (by me) in order for the parents (of the children in state care) to achieve in order to "get" their children home. However, the parents were not thrilled with a lot of the objectives and found it hard to meet subjective objectives. They wanted concrete things to do, pass, participate in, and they say, "There! I have done everything you asked of me, now I want my children back!" However, the goals were not that simple. As their caseworker, I asked them to make changes in their thinking patterns, behaviors, and show progress in their parenting skills as ...