Empowerment en vision eller ett faktum? : Personliga ombuds resonemang kring empowerment som arbetsmetod.

The purpose of our study is to examine the case managers reasoning and descriptions of empowerment as a method in their social work from a comprehensively perspective including family members. To manage with this purpose we interviewed two case managers, two clients with mental disabilities and five family members. We have come to the conclusion that the case managers works more consist of advocacy than empowerment. Despite that we have found that the long term goal for the case mangers work is to give the clients tools for empowerment. Our results also show that the clients feel that they have gained and increased their ability to do things by themselves and to be a part of the community. The family members feel that they have been empowered because of that the case managers have given them advises of how they can support the clients in a better way, which have released them from family burdens