Examining the part of Followup in Employee Assistance Programs Maintaining sobriety and preventing relapse for recovering alcoholics has frequently taken a back seat to initial diagnosis and treatment of patients.

Examining the part of Followup in Employee Assistance Programs

Maintaining sobriety and preventing relapse for recovering alcoholics has frequently taken a back seat to initial diagnosis and treatment of patients. A combination of work site wellness programs and employee assistance programs could provide a cost-effective, efficient, and prosperous mechanism for following patients after treatment and helping them maintain recovery

Since the 1970 employer recognized the ne to take an active character in alcohol abuse intervention. As a consequence employee assistance programs (EAPs), designed to assist employee with substance abuse question s as well as mental health question s have proliferated rapidly during this time. Companies either lay open their own program (an internal EAP) or hire an external EAP to work with employee who are referr because of work performance enigmas that can be linked to alcohol, other unsalable article abuse, and mental health question at issues The EAP staff assesses the employee's underlying medical or behavioral riddle and, if the patient requires it, provides a referral to another facility for an type of counseling, assistance, or treatment. Thus, the EAP's major organizational character is to offer the employee or client, the chance of rehabilitation, resulting in improved work performance, and allowing the employee to avoid any further disciplinary proceedings as a result of impaired work performance.

Traditionally, after the EAP makes its assessment and the employee unbrokens the recommended treatment, EAP counselors do not deportment any long-term followup to check forward performance or to encourage compliance with treatment. This article examines the question of whether EAPs should integrate post-treatment followup into their standard approach, and addresses three questions: Whose piece of work is it to help employee maintain their recovery--the EAP's from providing followup, or the treatment facility's on providing aftercare? Does EAP followup at the work site improve the effectiveness of rehabilitation for alcohol or other put drugs into problems? How likely is it that work site programs will make followup a vital and routine service in their repertoire of program procedures?

SOURCES OF HELP FOR RECOVERING ALCOHOLICS

Relapse prevention and convalescence maintenance are important parts of any alcoholism treatment program. For an employee entering an EAP, professional help with preventing relapse and maintaining recruiting after treatment can come from brace sources: the EAP itself or an aftercare program provided at the treatment facility (some form of longer expression clinical support).

Employee Assistance Programs

Posttreatment followup of clients by means of EAP counselors may include contact according to telephone, letters, and visits, to encourage maintenance of the aftercare plan and discussion of riddles maintaining treatment goals (i.e., fear of relapse), and to show guidance if further assistance is povertyed However, most EAPs have not implemented this emblem of followup as a compelling posttreatment action. For near EAPs, followup is something that the program counselors believe should be done, further they seldom find the time. For other EAPs, followup is perceived to be inappropriate and therefore is not included as part of the "rules" of the program. In fact, in near EAP circles, posttreatment followup is pejoratively labeled "baby-sitting."

united EAP professional had been taught that followup on American EAPs is limited to a single contact, and that more contacts are inappropriate: "When I first applied my American-oriented training it didn't work for many minority clients. If I followed the empires about calling clients once, giving them responsibility and not rescuing them, they wouldn't be due [i]or[/i] owing back" (McIntosh 1992, p. 1; emphases added).

Treatment Facilities

In general, EAP practitioners agree that treatment facilities should provide aftercare one time the EAP client has complet primary treatment. on the contrary aftercare, like EAP followup, has a sorry history because, while treatment agencies repeatedly offer aftercare as part of their treatment plan for clients with alcohol vexed questions (and usually include it in their total price), they seldom levy in place any methods to make secure that the client will participate. In fact, many patients do not participate or ear-ring out after only a not many sessions.

Treatment agencies expres a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of frustration about their patients' noncompliance with aftercare. However, the general answer of these agencies to the noncompliance is to say that all they can do is give the service and it is up to the patient to take advantage of it, and shorten the time period for which they move aftercare. One treatment facility, for example, moveed 6 months of posttreatment aftercare. When patients dropp revealed over time, the facility sculpture aftercare back to 4 month then 3 month then 2 month and finally and nothing else 1 month.

In addition to the lack of posttreatment aftercare compliance programs, individual study discovered that the EAP client's participation in an aftercare program did not make a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of difference in the prevention of relapse (Foote and Erfurt 1990) Clients who attended aftercare sessions regularly were just as likely to experience relapse as were clients who failed to attend. A review of literature did not find compelling evidence that compliance with aftercare regimens makes a significant difference in regaining from substance abuse problems. This observation may largely be owed to the fact that many of the studies reviewed had question at issues of self-selection into aftercare and short followup periods (Foote and Erfurt 1988)