ABSTRACT
This chapter explores findings regarding care managers views on the construction of service users as consumers within the discourse of care management, including whether they had been able to increase service users' choice and whether they felt that as care managers, they could empower service users. The term 'empowerment' is also used in the context of consumerism and refers to the process by which service users are helped to take greater responsibility for their own lives. Empowerment can be used in the political sense or the economic sense. Empowerment involves establishing the legitimacy of user-determined goals as an attribute of citizenship' and is therefore a political concept. The managerialistic practice of standardizing assessment forms was thought by one team to have been empowering to some service users. Efforts to construct service users as citizens or partners were limited. The potential of direct payments to enhance choice was raised.
