Implementation standards : practices in South African Social Work and Criminology benchmarked against EAPA-SA standards

Abstract

The EAPA-SA Standards document had been formulated by The Standards Committee of EAPA-SA for the first time in 1999. Two revised editions have been developed since. Even though the concept of standards originated in the USA, South Africa was one of the first countries to follow suit in creating a formal framework of practice for employee assistance practitioners. The goal of this study was to explore the EAP practices of the members of EAPA-SA, benchmarked against the different EAPA-SA standards, as part of the projected third revision process. The project was conducted as part of a group research project launched by four students, registered for a master s programme in EAPs offered by the Department of Social Work and Criminology at the University of Pretoria. Each participating student focused on a particular category of standards under the supervision of Prof Lourie Terblanche who was previously President of EAPA-SA and the programme manager of the mentioned master s programme. The researcher studied the category of Implementation standards which consisted of policy, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and the implementation plan. The findings of this study are truly reflective of the stage of application of these standards in the country, as the majority of responses were reasonably above the average percentile. This signifies the seriousness of the members in distinguishing themselves as professionals in practice. The evidence was witnessed and confirmed by the resounding responses of acknowledging the existence of policy in the workplace, followed by the confirmation of participation in the policy formulation. This behaviour indicates a grounded understanding of the mandates of the EAPA-SA standards as the policy sets the tone of the EAP in an organisation. The acknowledgement of covering all categories of EAP standards during the development of SOPS by the members was another significant finding that gave evidence that the members are ensuring the implementation of a well-rounded EA programme. The researcher also found that a great majority of these members had an implementation plan in place and that the plan covered all core technologies as prescribed by the Standards of EAPA-SA. The findings also unearthed the policy; the SOPs and implementation plan were not just developed but the members followed through and revised all these sub-standards. In summary, like any other growing profession there are still gaps that the researcher identified in the minority of responses such as the non-existence of policy, the lack of understanding of the difference between policy and SOPs, and the lack of existence of the implementation plan. Recommendations were made to the EAPA-SA Board in order to fill these gaps and to assist in updating the EAPA-SA standards.