The purpose of the study is to gain an understanding and to contribute with new knowledge on how unit managers in elderly care, manage the competence of assistant nurses. Furthermore, the study discusses what type of challenges assistant nurses might encounter. In their work, due to the increasing age. amongst residents in Sweden. Assistant nurses in Swedish elderly homes make a great effort to increase the quality of life for elderly people. However, in the long term unit managers in elder care will need to increase their amount of staff and also increase their unit of assistant nurses work competence. This is to give elderly people an even higher quality of care since the demands in healthcare are increasing in society and also people's life span is longer than before. Through semistructured qualitative interviews with eight unit managers in the elderly care field from the southern part of Sweden. We discovered that there are three types of competences unit managers define as an important source for working as an assistant nurse which are: language, technology and mental illness. Results show that unit managers have different ways to increase the competence of their staff, but it differs depending on what county they are in.