The activation of the helping professions of the South African Police Service (SAPS) with respect to an internal Employee Assistance Programme in the West Metropole

Abstract

Employee Assistance Programmes are to be established in all government departments, according to a circular of the director-general of the Department Public Service Administration. According to the head office of SAPS, the three disciplines of the Helping Professions should implement this programme. The Helping Professions consist of the Chaplains, Psychological Services and Police Social Work Services. The services rendered by the three disciplines were fragmented and had to be stream- lined and coordinated. This dissertation researched the activation of the existing helping professions in the West Metropole to participate in the development and integration of an effective internal EAP. This would result in more effective teamwork and minimising the duplication of services. In Chapter 1 the research problem was identified, namely activating the three disciplines into an EAP team for the benefit of the SAPS client. When this research was done, proper guidelines from the SAPS National Head Office were yet not in place. To put together an effective EAP team, the uniqueness of each discipline first had to be uncovered to ascertain its strong and weak points, and to determine how the three disciplines would complement one another. Attention was given to the relationship between their discipline-specific training and the core technologies of the EAP. Chapter 2 addresses these aspects. Chapter 3 consists of the findings of the literature review regarding the collaboration between the different disciplines within the helping professions over the broader spectrum. Quite a number of themes that were covered by the literature review were also identified and highlighted by the respondents of the helping professions of the West Metropole. Chapter 4 contains the results of the data analysis and interpretation of the empirical study. Rich data was obtained through a semi-structured schedule used in the interviews. A balance was struck between the functioning of the different disciplines, the literature review and the results of the empirical study, and that was captured in Chapter 5 where certain recommendations were made. Copyright 2004, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Biehl, J 2004, The activation of the helping professions of the South African Police Service (SAPS) with respect to an internal Employee Assistance Programme in the West Metropole, MA dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-02072005-153014 / >