Professional Health & Wellbeing Support

Occupational Health and HELP Employee Assistance Programme - A key focus during Q1 has been the tendering process for the new Occupational Health and Employee Assistance Programme contracts. The processes are firmly underway with the new contracts to be in place by April 2024. At the time of writing the Occupational Health tender is now live with the EAP process to commence in early August 2023. HWB are working closely with procurement and SPA colleagues on the processes with timelines in place to consider governance pathways.

During Q1 we have been focusing on the clinical outcomes of the counselling and structured intervention support our people are receiving as a result of engaging with HELP EAP. Within this area two measures are used to determine this, Combined Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) and Combined Generalised Anxiety Disorder Assessment (GAD). PHQ/GAD are standardised clinical questionnaires which measure depression with 9 questions (PHQ9) and anxiety with 7 questions (GAD7).

They form part of the data set which is used by the NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapy when delivering counselling. They help the practitioner understand the severity of depression/anxiety which their client is exhibiting and should be seen as part of the screening process rather than providing a diagnosis. Within Help Employee Assistance these two measures are given at the start and at the end of therapy which enables us to understand whether the severity of the symptoms exhibited by the employee change over this time. For instance, an employee receiving counselling whose scores on depression move from ‘Severe’ to ‘Mild/Moderate’ would have an improved psychological functioning, be more alert and motivated at work with less chance of being off sick with a mental health related illness.

In the last quarter we have seen on average PHQ scores shift from 9.63 (moderate depression) pre counselling to 3.4 (none) post counselling. Similarly, the average GAD scores have been positive with a pre counselling score of 9.0 (moderate anxiety) to 3.0 (mild anxiety). The analysis above is based on the average number of people who took the evaluation before and after counselling.

Trauma Risk Management - The engagement and usage of TRiM across all areas of the service has displayed a noted increase during Q1 in comparison to Q1 22/23. Referrals have increased by 43% during this quarter, with 106 referrals taking place in contrast to 74 at this point last year. The most significant reasons for referral remain as suicides, RTC’s and incidents involving children and babies. The noted increase coincides with some significant incidents and the introduction and training of over 50 new assessors to the TRiM programme. The increased presence of assessors throughout the organisation not only improves our ability to process TRiM referrals but also acts a great avenue for raising awareness of the presence and role of TRiM itself.

The HWB team are currently working with the Strategic Workforce Development team to do a deep dive on the TRiM data with a focus on TRiM referral, intervention and absence, particularly psychological absence. The teams are currently working on this Power BI analysis, and we will report on this in the next quarter.