An integrated model of occupational assistance

Abstract

The workplace is a salient venue through which to address personal difficulties and to assist family functioning directly. Intervention in the workplace also assists the community by reducing the number and severity of problems experienced by families. Yet, what is the responsibility of social work to the workplace? Since the beginning of the industrial revolution in North America, an antagonistic relationship has existed between labour and management, with social workers acting as intermediaries. Responsibilities of occupational social workers have ranged from ensuring that young single women were living in virtuous Christian environments, to bringing widespread use of critical incident stress debriefing to Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) in the 1980s. These initiatives by social workers and related counselling professionals supplanted self-helpers in the workplace who had become active through groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous asearly as the 1940s.