An­na-Lisa Paul

As the fam­i­ly of Abi­gail Rago­b­ar con­tin­ue to mourn her pass­ing and news of her sto­ry cir­cu­lat­ed yes­ter­day, ques­tions arose about what led to her death.

Her fam­i­ly has at­trib­uted her un­time­ly demise to post­par­tum de­pres­sion (PPD) and the days lead­ing up to her death and her strug­gle with the syn­drome have been re­told by her sis­ter Char­lotte Young Sing.

The young moth­er of two, in­clud­ing a new­born, fell 40-feet from the bal­cony of a To­ba­go house where her fam­i­ly was va­ca­tion­ing on Sep­tem­ber 5. She suc­cumbed to her in­juries at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, on Wednes­day.

As many cit­i­zens read of her strug­gle with the syn­drome via the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, cit­i­zens every­where were re­mind­ed that there are pro­vi­sions by em­ploy­ers and var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions to as­sist them dur­ing times of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al dis­tress.

But while many pri­vate com­pa­nies have Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP) to help em­ploy­ees who may be en­coun­ter­ing such prob­lems, a pub­lic sec­tor and na­tion­al pro­gramme seems to be lack­ing.

Se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials yes­ter­day con­firmed to the T&T Guardian that the pub­lic ser­vice had an EAP "in the­o­ry alone." Speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, they said Gov­ern­ment ap­proved an EAP in 2004 for pub­lic ser­vants but it was not of­fi­cial­ly launched un­til 2010 un­der for­mer min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh. How­ev­er, they claimed the pro­gramme was cur­rent­ly non-func­tion­al.

Ad­mit­ting there was "some lev­el of ser­vice avail­able de­pen­dent on the min­istry," the em­ploy­ees ex­plained some min­istries were of­fer­ing in­di­vid­ual ser­vices but could not say what it in­clud­ed.

Pressed to say what the de­lay was in in­tro­duc­ing one gen­er­al EAP across the pub­lic ser­vice, sources replied: "The CPO's of­fice is like the Bermu­da Tri­an­gle, when things get there it just gets lost and there is no ac­count­abil­i­ty."

The of­fice of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer was orig­i­nal­ly man­dat­ed to en­force the EAP but had not act­ed on it dur­ing the last five years due to "ad­min­is­tra­tive set­backs," the T&T Guardian was told

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Max­ie Cuffie said each min­istry had dif­fer­ent ways of treat­ing an is­sue like post­par­tum syn­drome. He said the So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Gen­der Af­fairs Min­istries of­fered a range of ser­vices to the pub­lic which could al­so be ac­cessed by work­ers need­ing such ser­vices.

This was con­firmed by sources at the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, who said a ser­vice was of­fered to em­ploy­ees who were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing such is­sues and need­ed coun­selling and ad­vice.

Like many pri­vate em­ploy­ers, Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed al­so has an Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP) in place to pro­vide as­sis­tance to peo­ple who may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing emo­tion­al, men­tal and/or psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress.

GML of­fi­cials yes­ter­day con­firmed the com­pa­ny's EAP in­clud­ed coun­selling along with oth­er pro­vi­sions rec­om­mend­ed by of­fi­cials, which would be based on the em­ploy­ee's as­sess­ment.

The as­sess­ment, which can be done ei­ther through self-re­fer­ral or via a su­per­vi­sor, fo­cuss­es on the em­ploy­ee's med­ical re­port as well as their psy­chi­atric and psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion.

The of­fi­cial said any­thing im­pact­ing a work­er's per­for­mance while on the job would be rea­son enough for that per­son to be re­ferred to the EAP and could in­clude is­sues stem­ming from the home en­vi­ron­ment.

What is EAP

An EAP is a work-based in­ter­ven­tion pro­gramme de­signed to iden­ti­fy and as­sist em­ploy­ees in re­solv­ing per­son­al prob­lems, in­clud­ing mar­i­tal, fi­nan­cial or emo­tion­al prob­lems; fam­i­ly is­sues and sub­stance/al­co­hol abuse that may be ad­verse­ly af­fect­ing the em­ploy­ee's per­for­mance.

This is typ­i­cal­ly a ser­vice pro­vid­ed by an em­ploy­er to the em­ploy­ees and is de­signed to as­sist em­ploy­ees in get­ting help for these prob­lems so that they may re­main on the job and con­tin­ue to be ef­fec­tive.

Ac­cord­ing to on­line in­for­ma­tion, the EAP orig­i­nal­ly fo­cussed on drug and al­co­hol ad­dic­tion, with an em­pha­sis on re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing val­ued em­ploy­ees rather than ter­mi­nat­ing them for their sub­stance abuse prob­lems.

Over the years, the EAP has been ex­pand­ed to in­clude not on­ly men­tal health and sub­stance abuse is­sues but al­so gen­er­al health, well­ness and work/life con­cerns.

It is be­lieved that an EAP could re­sult in var­i­ous ben­e­fits for em­ploy­ers, in­clud­ing low­er med­ical costs, re­duced staff turnover/ab­sen­teeism and high­er em­ploy­ee pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.