Occupational Social Work The purpose of this paper is to rev

. . . in which social workers attend to the human and social needs of employees and the work milieu by designing and executing appropriate interventions to ensure healthier individuals and environments. (p.16)

The three areas reviewed are: (1) Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs); (2) Occupational Health and Safety; and (3) Unemployment. For each area, the paper identifies one clinical issue and one "macro-level" or policy issue.

Many sociologists have stated that America faces no challenge greater than that of making the workplace safe and healthful. However, it is important to note that safety and health in the workplace can be placed at risk in two ways: (1) through safety hazards in the external work environment; and (2) through impaired work performance on the part of employees with personal problems (e.g. family problems, psychoemotional problems, substance abuse problems, etc.) The Employee Assistance Program was designed to address and remediate worker-related problems that are a threat to their occupational safety and health.

Clinical Issue. In a statement issued by the AFL-CIO Executive Council (May 21, 1986), it was noted that the use of prevention and rehabilitation programs such as EAPs was supported by the union for treatment of the substance abusi

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flation and consequent unemployment has not been well-researched. Indeed, determining this relationship calls for a different kind of research. The foregoing point has been made in a discussion of micro-level issues in social work with the unemployed presented by Brenner and Mooney (1985). The authors feel that in order to examine the stress-related illnesses arising as a function of response to unemployment, there is a research need for: . . . more than large samples and long-term cohort approaches; it requires diagnostic specificity that permits the researcher to control for the risk factors ordinarily understood to influence the disease process, quite apart from the additional feature of unemployment. . . Only with such controls can estimates be made of the implications of economic stress [due to unemployment]... Social workers need to encourage researchers in their field to conduct the type of research that integrates the sociological perspective with the psychological/medical perspective of stress-related illness as it relates to the stress of unemployment. Perhaps working to increase or enlarge funding sources for such research is one direction social workers might take. In their own clinical practice, they may wish
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Assistance Programs, Brenner Mooney, Clinical Issue, Executive Council, Due Hooper, Health Administration, Indeed NASW, Health Safety, Macro-Level/Policy Issue, School Social, social workers, occupational social, occupational health, occupational health safety, health safety, safety health, substance abuse, clinical issue, stress-related illness, occupational social workers, employee assistance, environmental agencies, occupational safety health, agencies environment agencies, employee assistance programs,
Approximate Word count = 2533
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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