ISSUE DATE: 01st May 2020
NHS Highland has today launched its Employee Assistance programme (EAP) which will allow all staff across NHS Highland to access confidential support to help cope with personal or work related problems that may be affecting their health, wellbeing or performance
The service is free to use and will be delivered by The Validium Group, a professional and independent Employee Assistance Programme provider who support over 350 organisations in the UK.
It is accessible 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, via a freephone telephone number and also the online VClub portal. It is available to all employees and provides short-term, solution-focused counselling and information services from Validium’s specialist teams. These include:
- Qualified counsellors – to help with personal or work-related concerns
- Qualified solicitors – to provide information and signposting with personal legal matters
- Money and debt team – to help with financial difficulties and for information and signposting with personal money matters
- A range of health and wellbeing specialists – to provide information and signposting on health and medical and lifestyle matters
Fiona Hogg, NHS Highland?s Director of Human Resources and Colleague Wellbeing Lead, said: ?I?m delighted that we have been able to rapidly advance our plans to offer this invaluable service to our colleagues, at a time when there are so many pressures on our health and wellbeing both inside and outside work.
?Validium offer a high quality service which provides a broad range of support that will be of great benefit to colleagues at NHS Highland now and in the future. The services can be accessed at any time, from any location, when people need them most and complements our many other channels of support, including our Occupational Health service, our recently launched Psychological Wellbeing support teams and our excellent Spiritual Care department.?
Colleagues across NHS Highland will find full details of how to access the service in their emails, on the intranet site and on posters, leaflets and cards that will be distributed across the organisation.
ENDS