The overall aim of this licentiate thesis is to analyse and understand the assessment of older adults’ social needs in relation to the bureaucratic and spatial conditions that shape rural municipalities. It further examines how care managers exercise their discretionary space to address the social needs of older adults.

Based on the premise that knowledge is created through the social reality within which care managers operate, this study analyses how such knowledge can be understood through the theoretical concept of discretion and theories of spatiality. The findings demonstrate that the assessment of social needs is a context-sensitive practice where professional discretion must balance equal treatment with individual adaptation, within frameworks shaped by both local practices and national guidelines. Care managersemploy both engagement and decision-making strategies to identify and address the social needs of older adults. In doing so, they often navigate the tension between individuals’ real needs and officially accepted needs — for example, when social needs must be reframed as medical needs to qualify for support. The study also reveals that social needs assessment in rural areas is characterised by both challenges and opportunities linked to geographical and social conditions. A key challenge concerns inadequate housing standards and distances to services, which complicate the granting of support measures. Care managers reflect on the boundary between individual responsibility and the compensatory role of social services. At the same time, the study shows that the dense social networks, the relational proximity of home care services, and strong sense of belonging among older adults in rural areas create conditions that enable care managers to better understand and meet social needs.

The concluding discussion deepens the understanding of the findings through three main conclusions: practices of (in)visibility of social needs,differing conditions for equal treatment, and the rural area as an enabler. Each conclusion is discussed separately followed by a summary of the study’s scholarly contributions and implications for practical social work.