Vague consents : Care manager´s experiences of working with people with dementia

This study aims to understand how care managers approach consent and user influence related to older people with dementia. The study was conducted through qualitative interviews with individual care managers and with a hermeneutic approach. We have interviewed ten care managers in smaller municipalities whom are experienced in their profession and have been in contact with older people with dementia. throughout all the interviews, we had a semi-structured interview guide at our disposal, and after all the interviews were conducted, we analyzed them with the hermeneutic circle and theoretically analyzed the material with Lipsky´s theory about street level bureaucracy, acting space and, what we call it, the social service as a last resort and finally with Johansson´s theory of client relationships. Our main conclusions regarding consent is that care managers need to relate to the law simultaneously have the individual needs and wishes in regards. Also, the care managers have a few ways to circumvent the absolute that the individual needs to give his or hers consent to everything. Our main conclusions regarding user influence is that the care managers need to use other professions for information regarding the individual, such as nurses, carers, dependants and so on. They also prefer to get in touch with the individual whom is diagnosed with dementia as early into the disease as possible to get to know them and learn how they want their care to be. As a last conclusion about the whole study is that the care managers find working with older people with dementia is a vastly difficult task, and they need to rely on dependants, other professions and have a lot of knowledge about the individual