Det är ju så, alla passar ju inte in i den där lilla ramen.

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study was to examine how care managers experience the challenges that they encounter in their meetings with elderly who suffers from mental illness. We have through qualitative semi structured interviews interviewed seven care managers within the elderly care. To analyze our result we have used Michael Lipsky’s theory about street level bureaucracy. The care managers in our study talked about the elders mental illness in terms of: loneliness, isolation, melancholy, worry, sadness, aggressiveness, anxiety, depression, misconception and suicide attempts. Our results showed that the care managers experience four primary challenges in their contact with elderly who suffers from mental illness. These are that the services available doesn’t always fit the elderly who suffers from mental illness, and as a result the care managers sometimes have difficulties finding the right help to provide to their clients. The care managers also experience challenges in establishing contact with the elderly, and our findings shows that physical needs are prioritized before social needs. The care managers also talked about the challenges of cooperation with the providers of elderly care, in the sense that the care managers must rely on a third party to provide the efforts they decide upon.