Conflicting Bureaucracies Conflicted Work Summary

In the article, Conflicting Bureaucracies, Conflicted Work: Dilemmas in Case Management for Homeless People with Mental Illness, author Linda E. Francis describes her time researching the issues case management systems have when dealing with homeless, mentally ill, and drug addict clients. She describes the different types of bureaucracies at work in the system, the issues that the case management systems have, and the effects that these have on the workers and patients.
Francis had two questions that she sought to answer through her research, which were: what activities are conducted by a case management system, and how does the environment of the case management system effect how well the actions were carried out by the system. The main …show more content…
One issue is the stress that the conflict of the clashing two bureaucracies causes repercussions on the workers which influences how they interact with their clients on a day-to-day basis. The second issue deals with the fact that Francis conducted a qualitative research study of just one county mental health system which questions the generalizability of the results. This did not stop Francis from making generalizations. One such generalization Francis makes is that it appears to be a common occurrence that homeless people tend to suffer from addictions to the point that the addictions overshadow other serious conditions, such as mental illness. A second generalization that Francis makes is that case management workers and social workers in general create a socioemotional support system to make up for the shortcomings of their respective jobs. Francis justifies these generalizations by claiming that the length she goes through to give detail of what happened and her …show more content…
I whole heartedly agree with this statement because Francis spent five months studying only a single agency with the hopes of answering only two questions. If Francis was conducting quantitative research she would have sent surveys and questionnaires to worker and clients of case management systems. I believe that Francis conducted the correct type of research. By conducting a qualitative research study, Francis gave an in depth view of case management systems and showed extensive research for the issues involved. I would also have conducted a qualitative research study because it allows for closer examination of problems and allows the research to better understand what the causes of the problems are. However, that being said, the results of such a study are hard to generalize because of the small sample size. Francis only studied one agency which is a problem with generalizability. Nevertheless, I believe that Francis’ research is a good platform for other research to be conducted