October 6, 2005
Help is only a click away, thanks to new program
Got something bugging you? A nagging concern you’d like to discuss or research? Or maybe just a life or change issue you’d like some discreet help coping with? APS Helplink is a useful link to know.
APS Helplink is a new online employee assistance program offering advice, discussion, networking and even self-assessments to UW faculty and staff. It’s available now, offered as an online enhancement to the UW’s Carelink faculty and staff assistance program.
Simply visit www.apshelplink.com or search for “Care Link” on the UW home page, follow the link, then look to the right for the APS link and follow that.
At the APS HelpLink Web page you will see the constellation of online programs provided by APS, a national company long in the business of employee assistance. In July the UW expanded employee assistance to include this online service that provides access to help with personal issues such as relationships, caregiving, stress and communication at home and at work, coping with change and many other areas. It’s quick, confidential and just a few mouse-clicks away.
“This is a new addition to the Employee Assistance Program,” said Randi Shapiro, assistant director of the UW Work/Life Office, who oversees its day-to-day operations, including CareLink and APS Helplink, too. Adding Web-based support to the existing CareLink program is in keeping with the UW’s efforts to make information easily accessible and available, she said.
“People can actually get online to talk to a counselor or e-mail concerns to a counselor,” Shapiro said, though stressing that the online services are not intended to replace in-person counseling and assistance offered through other employee programs. “If you have a question about behavior you’d like to take some action on. It’s a great mechanism for that. There’s a whole list of life problems, and you can go in and do self-assessments.”
The site requires a “company code,” which will always be “UW,” after which you’ll be asked to type in a user name and password, which are yours to create. Shapiro suggests that for security reasons, users create names other than the ones they use in the UW system.
With entry, you get taken to a Web site where you can select among life issues (“stress,” “depression,” “intimate relationships,” “anger,” “anxiety,” “sexuality”) and the services you’re interested in pursuing (“online training,” “Ask a Pro,” help in finding a clinician or learning more about your own habits and issues through self-assessments).
As with any Web-based program or service, Shapiro said, there are certain security matters to consider. “We are not referring to this as a ‘secure Web site’ — it’s not like when you send off your VISA account number,” she said. AHS suggests, and Shapiro agrees, that UW users of the APS system not log in with the same user name and passwords they use at the UW systems, for added security.
Also, “We want to underscore that it’s not to replace one-on-one individual consultations” and other professional health care services provided in UW employee benefit plans. It’s more a personal first step, she said, “for life problems that hit everybody at some point.”
The services offered by the APS Helplink, Shapiro noted, are above and beyond the counseling and assistance provided through Care Link and other UW-based programs. Sometimes, she said, one might log on to ask a professional such a simple oft-occurring parent question as, “Is my teen off the wall?”
Shapiro said, “With this addition we are now offering a very well-rounded employee assistance program with everything from legal and financial consultations to in-person sessions with a trained professional — and we’re now able to do it in the privacy of work or home.”
On the Web:
UW Care Link site: http://www.washington.edu/admin/hr/worklife/carelink/
APS Helplink site: www.apshelplink.com
