Case Management: Advocacy

Learners will be taught the skills required to effectively promote the full integration of disadvantaged people into the mainstream of community life, using an empowerment model of case management. This involves introducing learners to empowerment theory and its implications for practice; highlighting legal and ethical issues in case management; and learning skills specific to empowerment-oriented case management, which include: critical awareness of systemic issues; engagement, not assessment; listening to, and understanding others' stories, not intake; barrier identification, not a problem identification focus; reinforcing internal strengths; developing informal support systems, connecting to formal supports; making community connections, not service linkage; mutual review and follow-up, not monitoring; individual and systemic advocacy skills based upon an understanding of power relations; building community capacity to assist devalued people; and empowerment-oriented crisis intervention which has become a crucial aspect of case management practice in an era of cutbacks to human services.