Associates in Employee Assistance is owned and operated by the clinicians who actually provide the counseling services to the employees/employers we serve. Therefore, we are greatly concerned about your satisfaction with the quality of the services we offer.
We place a high value on having experienced counselors who understand the complex dynamics of an employee assistance program. All of our counselors have at least 20 years of counseling experience and are "well seasoned" professionals. They all have Masters degrees and are licensed to practice in New York State. Most importantly we personally know the counselors who work for us and unlike some EAPs we don't send employees out to private practitioners who we don't know personally.
Our counselors are also very sensitive to the nature of dual relationships in EAP practice. Our client is not only the employee who comes for a counseling appointment in our office. Our client is also your company which employs the human beings that make up your work force. Because we are also concerned about your company's welfare we are very sensitive in how we advise the occassional disgruntled employee who comes to us seeking help. A private practitioner who sees a few EAP clients on the side and receives those referrals from a National EAP may not be as sensitive. We want to be a resource for your HR personnel and view them as our partner in helping employees.
As would be expected of licenced mental health professionals, we adhere to and comply with HIPAA laws and regulations, and maintain the strictist confidentiality for both the employee and the employer.
Simply put, you can not find a better, more qualified and experienced group of EAP counselors, who will act professionally and sensitively in meeting your company's EAP needs. We sincerely hope that you will give us the opportunity to prove ourselves an asset to your company and its employees.
About six years ago the EAP market in the Rochester, NY area changed dramatically when a large National player bought the largest local EAP services provider in the area.
This National player does many things very differently including employing few of its own counselors. Instead they refer some employees out to clinicians in private practice, which greatly reduces the overhead of "in house" salaries. These referrals require preauthorization. They also promote telephone counseling and expect the few counselors they do employ to engage in this questionable practice which is not considered clinically appropriate by any legitimate health insurance company.
One of our counselors was laid off when the new National player took over, and another counselor resigned due to the practice of promoting phone counseling.
The local EAP that several of our counselors had worked for had been a part of a large human service agency that had served the Rochester, NY area for over 80 years. Because the agency was going through some serious financial mismanagement, the local EAP was sold off to this National outfit.
We decided that the local EAP model that we had been working in had worked pretty well. We were after all working for the largest EAP in the Rochester, NY market before we were sold off to the National player. Since the National company decided to abandon the model of the local EAP they had acquired, we decided to base our EAP on that model.
We strongly believe in that model, and given our very rapid growth in our first five years, many of our contracting companies do too.
