Financial empowerment and your life
Case managers and financial
empowerment
As a case manager, you are in a good
position to provide financial
empowerment services to your
clients. Case managers like you have
access to and the trust of millions of
individuals who are most in need of
financial empowerment services. You
may feel more equipped and
empowered to provide these services
when you read the content and use
the tools provided in the toolkit.As a case manager, you may sometimes hesitate
to share information about financial
empowerment, because you feel like you don’t
know enough about it. Or you may feel like you
know the information but haven’t applied the
information and tools to your own life. In other
words, you might sometimes feel like you don’t
have the “right” to provide financial
empowerment information, because you may feel
your own financial house may not fully be in
order.
You can help your clients face money issues that
may be complicating their lives if you feel
knowledgeable about money and comfortable in
your own approach to money management,
credit, debt, and financial products. As you work
through each module of this toolkit, you will learn both the information and how the tools work.
As you try out the tools, you may also find ways to use your money to reach your own goals more
efficiently and effectively.
Financial empowerment: A way to improve
client and program outcomes
Sharing financial empowerment information and tools with clients may feel like a completely
different job—one more thing you’re being asked to add to your workload. But, once you become
familiar with the resources in this toolkit, we believe it can become natural to integrate its
contents into the work you do. That’s because its core functions relate to what you already do.
As a case manager, one of your job responsibilities is likely to be assessing client or client and
family needs. The toolkit starts you off with an assessment to help you understand your clients’
goals and the financial situations they may be facing.