Case Management
Case management in helping the homeless is of high quality and cost-effective means. Many people across the states are homeless; thus, they lead low-quality lives, with most of them being unemployed, and it is currently a public health crisis. Due to the state of unemployment, homeless people do not access healthcare services, and most of them suffer from diseases and mental illnesses such as depression. Case management works to help the homeless by supporting them to get shelter and access to unmet health care needs (de Vet, 2013).
Case management entails four aspects: assessment, planning, monitoring, and evaluation. For successful case management, all the elements have to be implemented well. Over the years, to ensure the case management yield positive outcomes (de Vet, 2013), models have been developed which provide some essential functions such as planning, outreach, and assessment. There are four know models; the Standard Case Management (SCM), Assertive Community Treatment (ACT), Intensive Case Management (ICM), and the Critical Time Intervention (CTI).
SCM gives a coordinated and integrated approach to delivering services to the clients, and it works to ensure continued supportive care. ICM is dedicated to clients with high service needs, so their case managers are required to work more. Act from the review of all models has yielded more results in helping the homeless, and mentally ill clients and its service delivery are available throughout the day with a teamwork approach in attending to patients. CTI enhances continued service delivery, thus bridging the gap between the service models, but its intervention is time-limited. All the models work towards achieving the same goal even if they work through different means, but it is difficult to conclude that one model is better than the other because they are not mutually exclusive (de Vet, 2013).
In the case of homelessness, a case manager comes in to support the people who get shelter and other needs to regain independence. The case manager also acts as a link between the client and partners supporting the program run so that the homeless people get the help they need. In the line of duty, case managers face challenges, and even when planning for service delivery to the population, they are assigned to help. Case managers are expected to offer practical support to homeless people (de Vet, 2013). The homeless people present with other problems that require medical intervention, and therefore, the case managers are expected to provide a wide array of services.
The managers are expected to be in contact with the client and the support system, which can cause burn out and compromise with the quality of services they deliver. Case managers can find difficulties in establishing relationships with homeless people. A link has to be built between the client and the case manager to help in easing service delivery and gathering essential information to improve how the case manager executes his management plan. Building relationships with people gets frustrating for the case manager when people have a different culture and language.
The case manager has limited resource access during planning, which poses a challenge in service delivery to the clients. With limited resources, it gets difficult for the case manager to develop an elaborate plan for the people. During plan development, it is difficult to establish the limit the services should extend because the partners who support the case management programs do not make it clear to what extent they can help. There are cases where it becomes challenging to get the necessary information from the people to help in planning, making the case management difficult. Without sufficient information, it is challenging to offer quality services to clients. Offering help to the people requires collaboration with the other team members in the service delivery model. When the team members do not collaborate, service delivery is thus compromised (de Vet, 2013).
For efficient service delivery, the case manager needs to establish a rapport with the population to assist them in meeting their treatment goals. A rapport will pave the way for information collected from the client, which will help in proper management. The case manager has to establish an empathetic connection with the people to encourage them to speak up. It gives them the feeling that the manager cares and is committed to helping them get better. The people the manager handles have a lot going on emotionally and physically; the manager should, therefore, apply a containment strategy to calm the clients and have them at ease before embarking on interviewing them this will strengthen the kind of relationship that develops. The manager should respect their opinions and not discredit then openly; instead, the manager should listen more and observe the non-verbal client cues. The manager should also use an open-ended question approach when addressing the clients to give room for them to express themselves without limitation. That will yield more information that will help in reviewing and selecting an appropriate treatment plan.
In conclusion, case management is useful in helping homeless people get off the streets but not without challenges. The effectiveness of the initiative is amplified when the case manager can establish a rapport with the clients so that they work together in achieving treatment goals.
Reference
de Vet, R., van Luijtelaar, M. J., Brilleslijper-Kater, S. N., Vanderplasschen, W., Beijersbergen, M. D., & Wolf, J. R. (2013). Effectiveness of case management for homeless persons: a systematic review. American Journal of Public Health, 103(10), e13-e26.