Clearhead Manager Support and Referral

Created by Petra Jaspers-Bedford, Modified on Wed, 17 Sep at 9:02 AM by Michelle Yandle

Brief advisory service

Full-service clients of Clearhead's Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) can access manager support via Clearhead's freephone line.

The service is available to HR Professionals and People Leaders, who may call for brief (<15 minutes) advisory support on a range of workplace mental health topics.

To access the service, call 0800 257 433 (NZ) or 1800 257 433 (AU) and press 1. When speaking to the operator, mention that you are looking for clinical manager support.

Clearhead may need to take details and call you back (usually within 2 hours) when members of our in-house team are not immediately available.

You may also end up with our after-hours team, or fallback service. Clearhead has on-call counsellors who can provide brief advice and support, with follow up arranged for the following day.

When calling during evenings, weekends and public holidays if you would like to speak to a member of our after-hours clinical team immediately, you will need to let the operator know your issue is urgent. Otherwise, the operator will take some details, and we will call you on the next business day.

What does the service help me with?

The nature of the advisory support service is to help you, as a people leader, with questions you might have about how to respond to a mental health challenge with a member (or members) of your team.

In that way, it is a navigation service, to help you and Clearhead (together) determine what resources, services or support you might need, and to establish an appropriate response plan.

This may include initial advice about how Clearhead can help when there are wellbeing concerns for an employee or employees. Please note that it is not legal advice or employment relations advice.

Common calls include questions like:

How do I refer one of my employees in for Clearhead EAP sessions?

An employee is repeatedly showing up late, tired and seems to be struggling. I’m starting to wonder if they are fit for duty. Can Clearhead help?

A member of my team was in a car accident. Is this a critical incident, and what should I do?

A member of my team has disclosed thoughts of harming themselves or others, or have had threats of harm made against them – what can we do?

After the initial call, Clearhead's recommendations may include referral to specialist services from our wide range of clinical workplace offerings, urgent therapy support, ongoing manager consulting and coaching from our in-house clinical team (billed per hour), or advice on how to encourage uptake of existing services already provisioned by your EAP package.

How does Manager Referral work?

Clearhead recommends that people leaders provide thorough information to their employees about EAP, and encourage personnel to access support directly (sometimes called self-referral) via our website, app or phone line in the first instance.

Clearhead provides monthly and evergreen resources to ensure managers are equipped to do so confidently.*

However, sometimes a manager will collect consent from an employee to have their details passed over for a manager referral into Clearhead EAP.

Managers or People Leaders can begin the process by completing the referral form using this link: https://myclearhead.typeform.com/therapyreferral

In urgent cases, call 0800 257 433 (NZ) or 1800 257 433 (AU) and press 1.

Once a manager referral is received, a member of Clearhead’s Therapy Support team will then reach out to the employee directly to confirm a few details, identify a Clearhead therapist suited to the type of referral, suggest date and time options for a first session, and confirm a booking.

*Please note that therapy needs to be undertaken voluntarily to be effective, so Clearhead discourages telling or implying to employees that their participation in EAP counselling is mandatory outside of exceptional circumstances. Speak to us for advice.

Confidentiality

Confidential access to support is a central tenet of EAP. Therefore, while the manager may provide information to Clearhead about an employee, Clearhead may not be able to provide reciprocal information to the manager about the employee.

In the case of a manager referral into regular Clearhead EAP counselling, this may include:

No confirmation that the employee took up the therapy offered to them.

No confirmation about the number of sessions the employee attended.

No separating or itemisation of invoices related to manager-referred therapy.

However, some specialist services or situations may call for a referral process where confidentiality is not upheld. On these occasions, employees need to be made fully aware of specific limits to their confidentiality and provide informed consent.

Clearhead will provide advice on when these situations apply, how they should be managed, and suitable consent forms where required.