What is Case Management?

Case management roles are found in a range of health and social care/support settings.  Case management may be a dedicated role or an aspect of an individual’s broader practice.

The definition adopted here identifies case management as,

“a collaborative process which assesses, plans, implements, coordinates, monitors, and evaluates the options and services required to meet an individual’s health, wellbeing, social care, education and/or occupational needs, using communication and available resources to promote quality, cost-effective and safe outcomes” (IRCM 2022)

Case Manager’ is not a protected title or a statutorily regulated profession and, unlike most other professional areas of health and social care practice, there is currently no specific educational qualification route into Case Management.

Individuals tend to transition into case manager roles from a variety of other educational or occupational routes, some being regulated by a professional body in relation to other aspects of their work and others not, but either way the fundamental case management aspects of their roles will not be regulated. This has led to the Institute of Registered Case Managers (IRCM) being established.

Find out more about case management by reading our Standards of Proficiency and the Case Management Competency Framework on our key documents page.