Managing the maze: case management and service delivery

The author discusses case management as the most recent social work effort to make manageable the pluralistic and proliferating array of human services. She notes that social work now claims case management as part of its long defined territory. The ability to make this function work is based upon an educational curriculum which prepares the professional in both direct interventive skills and management capability. Problematically, social work education usually provides the student with only one or the other sets of professional preparation. The importance of the power dimension must be acknowledged and honed if the case manager is to be successful working within a chaotic social service delivery system.