A Case Manager’s Question I Still Can’t Answer

“I search for financial literacy programs for my clients, and I find dozens of options. They all say they teach financial literacy. But when I send clients, they come back frustrated. The program talked about investment portfolios when they need to know how to negotiate a payment plan with their electric company.”

A case manager said this to me during fieldwork at a community empowerment center last fall. She wasn’t venting. She was asking a genuine, practical question: how is she supposed to know, from a program description, whether it will actually help the person sitting across from her?

I didn’t have a good answer for her in the moment, and honestly, I’m not sure the field has one yet. “Financial literacy” gets used to describe both long term wealth building content and crisis survival content, as though they’re the same subject with different difficulty levels. They’re not. One is about growing money you have. The other is about surviving a week where you don’t have enough.

What would actually help her? Program descriptions that name, specifically, which of those two things they teach. Not better marketing copy. Actual specificity.

I’d like to hear from people doing referral or case management work directly: what do you currently look for in a program description to figure out if it’s the right fit?

Author: Sandra Roussel
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