You want us to manage cases, never! Love, hate and paradoxes of the relationship of social workers with the notion of case management

PURPOSE: This communication concerns the renewal of case management in favour of the aspiration to link management and intervention in a services' integration device. Three main sections are encompassed in this communication. The first consists of a brief presentation of the history and foundations of case management, the second of an analysis of the receptiveness of the primary-adoptants of a pilot-study in France to a Quebecois case management model and the last of a proposition to reproblematize questions concerning the relation between management and intervention. METHODS: This presentation is based upon a transversal observation of results of qualitative studies concerning the reception of the notion of case management by social workers. The data were composed of discursive material collected from three studies (two from Québec and one from France) with social workers who recently engaged in case management. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Even though case management arose from the patrimony of social work, its renewal raises concerns in terms of rationalization, medicalization and systematization of the discipline. These fears are partly compensated by the hope that this new function will allow social workers to base their interventions with complex clinical cases on an interdisciplinary solidarity.