Women and HIV:

Women constitute one of the fastest growing groups of people infected with HIV. Women have always been affected by HIV as informal or formal caregivers. Despite this, HIV services and education have been directed almost exclusively towards men. Given that women comprise half of the workforce, the change in the face of the epidemic requires a reexamination of the EAP professional's approach to AIDS education and services. This article delineates HTV-related issues specific to women and their impact on the functions of the EAP. Suggestions are made for targeting AIDS workplace education and prevention to women. The implications of women's issues on early identification, counseling, and referral by EAP professionals are also explored. Consideration is given to the cultural and socioeconomic diversity of women affected by HIV.     

Mental health practitioners’ strategies in equine-assisted psychotherapy: implications for social work

Equine-assisted psychotherapy (EAP), in this study, which included a mental health practitioner, an equine specialist, at least one horse, and a client in therapy sessions, is emerging in social work practice, education, and research. The purpose of this paper was to explore experienced EAP mental health practitioners’ cognitive activities and strategies to inform the social work profession.

Utilizing a constructive narrative approach, eight experienced EAP mental health practitioners participated. Two semi-structured, face-to face, individual interviews were used to gain their perspectives. Qualitative software assisted thematic analysis. The findings included a main theme identified as participants’ concrete strategies used in EAP with two subthemes. The second main theme identified abstract strategies with six subthemes.

EAP provides a holistic framework as social workers incorporate horses and natural environments in practice, which is consistent with systems theory. The findings inform experienced mental health practitioners to be effective therapists and educators, as well as to instill confidence in novices. Recommendations for the application of the findings in social work practice, education, and research are explained.     

Prerequisites of EAP Evaluation:

This chapter's main contention is that EAP evaluators, coordinators and administrators need to spend more time in thoughtfully planning EAP evaluations as such activities directly influence the quality of any subsequent evaluation. The chapter outlines four prerequisites to be considered in this regard. These are: (1) a sincere commitment to evaluate the program, (2) answering the why, when, and how of the evaluation; (3) the goals and objectives of the EAP require specification; and (4) information should be in retrievable form. These prerequisites are discussed within the context of a cooperative planning process between the administration, the EAP coordinator and EAP evaluator(s), and are described as to how they may directly influence the EAP evaluation.     

EAP Service Use in a Managed Behavioral Health Care Organization: From the Employee Perspective

Contemporary employee assistance program (EAP) services are typically provided in broad-brush programs delivered by large external vendors in a network model. Yet research has not kept pace with EAP evolution, including in terms of how EAP clients themselves view services. We surveyed a random sample of EAP service users from a national provider (361 respondents). About one-third of respondents reported getting help for workplace issues. Most learned about the EAP through employer communications such as the company website. The large majority reported that the EAP helped them "a lot" or "some," suggesting they valued this benefit.     

Experiences of internal and hybrid employee assistance program managers: Factors associated with successful,at-risk,and eliminated programs

Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) originated as workplace-focused programs delivered largely by peer employees. Over the past 25 years, the once standard internal EAP has largely been replaced by internal/external hybrid programs or outsourced EAP vendors. Many long-standing internal programs have been downsized or eliminated, along with their internal program manager positions. This qualitative study examined the organizational, leadership, and programmatic characteristics associated with the internal and internal/hybrid EAPs from the perspectives of EAP managers working in programs that have thrived and those that have depreciated. Twenty-four current and former internal or internal/hybrid EAP managers were interviewed using a semistructured interview schedule. Qualitative methods were used to identify patterns and themes within the data to describe the experience of internal and internal/hybrid EAP managers and the critical success and risk factors associated with their positions and programs. Five final themes, with 15 subthemes emerged from the data, suggesting that both individual and organizational characteristics of EAP internal and hybrid programs are important to the program’s sustainability. These findings offer insights regarding best practices and critical success factors to EAP professionals, EAP purchasers, and the EAP industry.     

Evaluation of an employee assistance program at a transportation company

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) in terms of selected work performance indicators and treatment outcomes. Three primary data sources were utilized: a questionnaire administered to EAP users, reports from EAP counsellors on treatment diagnoses and outcomes, and employee records on absenteeism and other performance criteria over a five year time period. On the whole, EAP clients reported very favourable outcomes regarding the quality of services and improved well being, and the counsellors reported successful treatment outcomes. However, employee records on performance outcomes indicated that EAP clients had higher rates of problems before, during and after treatment, compared to a matched control group. Additionally, rates of sick days significantly increased from before to after treatment among EAP users.     

Resistant Employees

The goal of Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) is to assist employees with a host of emotional, behavior, and family problems which interfere with their ability to function optimally on the job (Sussal & Ojakian, 1988). EAP counselors work to quickly identify, assess and resolve employees' problems. Frequently, there are employees, who seek EAP assistance, but are resistant to changing their behavior. The purpose of this article is to propose the use of Brief Counseling (BC) intervention techniques with resistant employees.     

The Role of Needs Assessment in the Design of Employee Assistance Programs:

This paper describes the value of a multimethod needs assessment in developing and tailoring an employee assistance program (EAP) to the particular characteristics, problems, and resources of an organization and then provides an illustration of an EAP needs assessment conducted for a city municipality. Unique concerns of city employees, and the specific EAP programs designed to address these concerns, are highlighted.     

Preparing marriage and family therapy students to become employee assistance professionals*

While the number of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) has grown tremendously, opportunities for marriage and family therapists in EAP settings have not been adequately described. This paper addresses issues pertinent to training Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) students to develop the skills needed to become EAP professionals. Qualifications for becoming an EAP professional are described and suggestions are made as to how these skills may be taught within the framework of an academically based MFT training program.     

The Development and Evaluation of a Case Management System in an Employee Assistance Program

This article suggests there is a lack of a conceptual framework for developing a system of intervention in an Employee Assistance Program (EAP). The author proposes that the development life cycle concept is a framework for planning a case management system of intervention in an EAP. Stages of the life cycle are used to describe the activities in planning and evaluating the activities of a case management system.     

The Utility of Personality Inventories in the Employee Assistance Process

Abstract

A study was conducted to assess the usefulness of objective measures of personality in (a) the identification of employees in need of an employee assistance program (EAP) and (b) the evaluation of employee mental health change as a result of EAP participation. In addition, comparisons of EAP referred and non-referred employees were made on race, sex, age, and performance variables. MMPI, CPI, and SRA-Verbal Form test data from all or part of a sample of 376 police officers referred for fitness-for-duty evaluations were used in various analyses. Many of the officers were reassessed following an EAP intervention, while others chose not to accept the intervention (forming a natural control group). It was found that the MMPI-2 has the potential utility in both the identification and evaluation stages of the EAP process. Males and black employees were found to more likely to be referees to an EAP. Finally, it was found that referred employee performance was more than a half a standard deviation lower than that of non-referred employees.     

EAP Referral Training and Supervisor's Beliefs About Troubled Workers

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between EAP referral training and supervisors' interactions with troubled workers. Using a field survey, self-report, retrospective methodology, 224 industrial supervisors' beliefs about impaired employees were examined in connection with the former group's participation in constructive confrontation training and their attitudes toward EAPs. In general, based on Bayer and Gerstein's (1988a) Bystander-Equity Model of Supervisory Helping Behavior, it was predicted that supervisors who had attended training and/or held positive attitudes toward their EAP would report more welldeveloped beliefs about troubled workers than persons who had not received training and/or held negative attitudes toward their EAP. Overall, our results provided support for the idea that constructive confrontation training enhances supervisors' recognition of impaired employees. While we anticipated this finding, we did not expect supervisors to report that their attitudes toward their EAP were unrelated to their beliefs about troubled persons. Alternative explanations for why supervisors behaved differently from what we had anticipated are offered, as are suggestions for how to conduct research on other aspects of the supervisor-impaired worker identification process.     

高职院校领导干部心理和谐的诊断及构建

高职院校领导干部的心理和谐是指学校的党委书记、副书记、委员、校长、副校长等领导干部个体内部的自我心理和谐和群体内部彼此之间的心理和谐。由于受到职业倦怠、党政不和、唯官唯上、派系林立等不良因素的影响,高职院校许多领导干部的心理长期处于不和谐状态。为了维护领导干部的心理健康,高职院校必须在全校范围内树立正确的职业价值观、建立科学的考评机制、优化领导班子结构、建立强大的社会支持系统并引进EAP心理健康教育模式。     

A Brief Overview of Research Techniques Used to Evaluate Three Employee Assistance Programs Through the Family Service Association of Metropolitan Toronto Experience

This article describes three models of Employee Assistance Program (EAP) evaluations used by the Family Service Association of Metropolitan Toronto, a major provider of national EAPs in Canada. Each EAP and their subsequent evaluation is tailored to the specific needs of the different organizations. Example l focuses on a case by case review. Example 2 describes a method of determining how well the EAP reaches troubled employees and comments on the effectiveness of the intervention. Example 3 describes how a simple but effective user survey provides information for evaluation purposes. These three evaluation models are examples of how EAPs and their evaluations respond to the uniqueness of various organizations and their respective client groups.     

A Systems Theory Analysis of Employee Assistance Programs

The systems theory principles of wholeness or nonsummativity, dynamic equilibration, nonlinear causality, feedback, equifinality, and permeable boundaries are described with conceptual and practical implications for employee assistance programs. Ten interfacing macrosystems relevant to EAP work are identified (e.g., employees; families; supervisors and management; unions; business community), and ways to account for and address the diverse agendas of these systems in EAP practice are discussed.     

EAPs in Transition:

This paper is a survey report of EAP purpose and practices. One hundred and eighty-two (n = 182) randomly selected EAP practitioners responded to a questionnaire designed to measure purposes, services, staff specialties and characteristics, service users, and related background information. The findings provide an empirical evaluation of the "state of the art" of the growth, development and trends in the employee assistance field. Also, while the findings indicate that EAPs are in transition several basic functions common to all are identified.     

Paving the Way for EAP Evaluations:

The theme of this chapter centers on the development of key process questions that precede and direct the development of EAP evaluations. The main assumptions of this chapter are: (1) that nonthreatening process-type questions may be used in helping EAP evaluators plan their evaluations; and (2) that the profession of social work can meaningfully assist in developing and answering such questions. These process questions emerge from considcring issues related to: (1) policies and procedures; (2) services; And (3) the administration of EAP programs. The role of the social worker in this process is described, and the unique knowledge and skill of the social work profession in this particular role is explored and identified.     

Chapter 10: Ceridian's Experience in the Integration of EAP,Work-Life and Wellness Programs

SUMMARY

This article considers EAP services, work-life and wellness programs and the implications of integrating these services. The concept of how wellness programs enter into this equation is explored as well as how Web-based services have played a significant role. Ceridian's experience in providing these services is explored through a case study, anecdotal information, and other data. This article reviews why integrated EAP services, work-life and wellness programs offer more value when compared to programs that contain individual components. It is concluded that wellness and the Internet continue to play a key role in programs becoming more integrated. It is also suggested that integration is now larger than traditional EAP, work-life, and wellness programs. Other human resource services are becoming more important components of integrated services.     

An Elder Care Training Needs Assessment Among Employee Assistance Program Staff Employed by New York State Government:

A mail survey of 224 EAP staff members employed by various departments of New York State government explored the issue of elder care. Self-report questionnaire data evaluated training history competence to handle employed caregiver problems/questions, and individual department commitment. Major findings generally replicated those of a previous regional study conducted with 95 Western New York EAP staff members. Survey results showed: (1) EAP staff members estimated that one in five employees currently provides care for an older dependent; (2) the majority (56.9%) of staff members have not received any training relevant to elder care; (3) self-assessed competence to handle elder care problems was low for 13 of 17 problem-solving domains constituting the Elder Care Competence Index (ECCI); (4) the few (14.9%) EAP staff members with extensive (two or more sessions) elder care training experience achieved ECCI scores nearly 150% higher than staff members without such training, p < .001; (5) most (73.0%) departments have not dealt with elder care in any formal way and only 3.6% of the EAP staff believe this inaction to be appropriate; and (6) department commitment to the issue of elder care is predictive of both training (p < .01) and staff competence (p < .01). The implications for training, policy, and future research are discussed.