The Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) is a not-for-profit, member-funded organisation advocating for the future of Australia's children.
We work on behalf of long day care owners and operators to ensure families and their children have an opportunity to access affordable, high quality early learning services throughout Australia.
The Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) has proudly to partnered with TELUS Health in order to offer the early learning sector a high-quality Employee Assistance Program (EAP) at a fraction of the usual cost.
We chose TELUS Health because they offer a comprehensive modern Employee Assistance Program (EAP) which aims to destigmatise mental health issues and offer a more holistic approach.
In addition to professional counselling and therapy services, TELUS Health offers your team of staff access to ongoing proactive health advice, via a range of interactive digital tools such as a mobile app and website resources.
Importantly, TELUS Health offers personalised solutions with a tailored level of support that individuals are comfortable with, when and how they choose it.
ACA President Paul Mondo and TELUS Health Director of Business Development Kylie Hancock provide an overview of:
While lifestyle factors including work, diet, drugs and lack of sleep can all affect one's mental health, those struggling with a mental health problem are often experiencing additional factors.
Life experiences such as serious illness or a death in the family, family or marital problems, physical health problems, social isolation, study or work stress can all have an impact on the mental health of your team members.
If mental health issues among your team are not addressed, they can eventually lead to high absenteeism, lost productivity and high staff turnover.
You may be interested to know that ACECQA's Ten Year Workforce Strategy includes an entire focus area on wellbeing (Focus Area 4 on page 52), which calls for research into practical mental health strategies for employees that work and the promotion of these wellbeing supports.
As an employer, you can implement strategies for a healthy workplace which promote the mental and physical wellbeing of your staff and also provide support to anyone who may be experiencing mental health issues.
A very important part of your strategy to foster a mentally healthy workplace includes offering your staff access to an EAP, which aims to enhance mental health and wellbeing, maximise productivity and improve organisational culture.
By improving your team members' lives and wellbeing, they will be happier, healthier, and ultimately more engaged and productive at work.
An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is an external service, paid for by the employer, to ensure their employees and their families have access to professional assistance for personal or work-related issues that are impacting on their employment or work performance.
The EAP usually offers your team of staff a suite of practical services such as counselling or therapy from psychologists, social workers and other mental health professionals along with practical everyday life support including general health advice and programs. A comprehensive EAP can even include legal services and financial management or debt support.
Any EAP benefits received by employees or family members remain confidential.
This means that while the employer pays for the service, they have no insight into an employee's specific use of the service.
That is, employers do not get to know who is utilizing the service, what the reasons are for, or how often employees call.
This is an important detail, as it means that employees can trust that they are engaging with a private, confidential service.
EAP services are offered at no cost to the employees - it is the employer who pays for the service.
Under most EAP packages to employers, the employer pays an annual subscription fee and sometimes additional charges depending on the service being accessed by the staff, such as the counselling service (which can be face-to-face or a telehealth service).
Generally the EAP subscription fee to the employer can range from $2,000 - $5,000 annually, with an additional average cost of approximately $90 a year per employee. The total cost to the business will vary depending on the number of staff employed. As an example, for a business that has 30 staff, the annual cost for an EAP would work out to approximately $5,000 to $8,000 a year.
In the context of the challenging times for the early learning sector as well as for the entire Australian community over the last few years, the Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) is committed to addressing the mental health needs of our sector. We know that larger service providers are in a stronger position to be able to afford an EAP service, whereas smaller service providers are less likely to have the financial capacity to take one on.
Our partnership with TELUS Health means that we can offer an ongoing high-quality EAP package to the early learning sector at a fraction of the usual annual cost.
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The ACA/TELUS Health EAP Pricing Structure The 12-month annual subscription fee is calculated at:
Eg. If you have 100 staff, the annual fee (ie. a 12-month subscription) for an ACA member would be $2200 plus GST or $2900 plus GST for a non-member.
ACA's annual subscription period which commences on 1 August every year. New sign ups outside of this period will be billed on a pro-rata basis (i.e. for the amount of months to take place between the time of subscription and 1 August next year).
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When you sign up to the ACA/TELUS Health offer, your team of staff will have:
The ACA/TELUS Health EAP subscription does not include Critical Indicent Support, but when you sign up to the EAP you have immediate access to this service as an add-on payable extra via TELUS Health should you require it. Your service will be invoiced directly from TELUS Health on a case by case basis, should you request this level of service.
TELUS Health uses a team of specialist clinicians with trauma response experience to provide appropriate and highly responsive critical incident support, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Their specialised Critical Incident Disaster Response support clinicians provide immediate guidance regarding the likely effects of a traumatic event, they will agree on an intervention plan, including clinically appropriate response times.
The TELUS Health team will also recommend the most appropriate intervention for your circumstances and will dispatch local clinicians to conduct onsite interventions.
To sign up, please complete the online subscription form here.
Within 7 days of completing the form, you will be sent:
As per the costs outlined below, the costs for the ACA/TELUS Health EAP are substantially less than for an EAP when subscribed directly between the employer and the EAP service. This is a permanant, ongoing offer from ACA to ensure that the early learning sector has access to an affordable, high-quality EAP.
We have achieved this low cost on the ECEC sector's behalf, by working with LifeWorks to come up with a packaged service that offers what we think are the most important inclusions for your team of staff, in order to be able to offer you an EAP at a much lower cost. These items include the 24/7 access to immediate telephone therapy, referals to in-person counselling and best-in-class clinical programmes that offer help and support for work, health and life changes.
The ACA/TELUS Health EAP Pricing Structure
The 12-month annual subscription fee is calculated at:
Eg. If you have 100 staff, the annual fee (ie. a 12-month subscription) for an ACA member would be $2200 or $2900 for a non-member.
That's it - there are no additional fees and this is an ongoing low-cost offer.
New subscriptions will be billed on a pro-rata basis if they are outside of ACA's annual subscription period, which commences on 1 August every year.
In order to reduce administrative costs, the ACA/TELUS Health EAP provides you with one log-in ID and password, to be shared with all staff.
However as soon as your individual staff members engage with the online platform on a personal level, such as by starting an online health assessment, they will be asked to create their own log-in & password. This means that if they record their weight, height, etc, this information will be stored in their own, private and personal profile.
No - the ACA/TELUS Health EAP offers employees 24/7 immediate access to telephone therapy.
However TELUS Health can also arrange referals to in-person counselling, of which the cost can be partially or fully covered by a Mental Health Plan (through your GP) via Medicare.
Under the ACA/TELUS Health EAP, your staff have free access to three sessions of telephone therapy for an individual issue.
An individual issue may be a life situation such as the death of a loved one, separation of a partnership, a particular trauma event or something more general such as your personal emotional state.
If individuals would like additional counselling or therapy for a particular issue beyond the three free sessions, they may be referred to an external counselling service. This is something they may wish to discuss during their session.
The ACA/TELUS Health EAP subscription does not include Critical Indicent Support, but when you sign up to the EAP you have immediate access to this service as an add-on payable extra via TELUS Health should you require it. Your service will be invoiced directly from TELUS Health on a case by case basis, should you request this level of service.
TELUS Health uses a team of specialist clinicians with trauma response experience to provide appropriate and highly responsive critical incident support, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Their specialised Critical Incident Disaster Response support clinicians provide immediate guidance regarding the likely effects of a traumatic event, they will agree on an intervention plan, including clinically appropriate response times.
The TELUS Health team will also recommend the most appropriate intervention for your circumstances and will dispatch local clinicians to conduct onsite interventions.
Your team members may like to:
No - the ACA/TELUS Health EAP subscription does not include any level of feedback or corporate reporting to the employer/service provider.
This is a level of service that we chose not to include, in order to keep the annual costs down. If this is a service you feel is important for your organisation, you may wish to contact TELUS Health (formerly LifeWorks) directly to explore the costs of a more tailored service.
If you are interested in a tailored EAP and Wellbeing solution specific to your organisation, you may consider subscribing directly with TELUS Health by emailing Kylie Hancock at kylie.hancock@telushealth.com.
TELUS Health Total Wellbeing can offer a tailored solution for your organisation, which can include, but not limited to:
To discuss your business needs, please contact Kylie Hancock at kylie.hancock@telushealth.com
Please note: If you have already subscribed to the ACA TELUS Health (formerly LifeWorks) offer & wish to upgrade to the TELUS Health Total Wellbeing Platform, you can do so immediately but please be aware that ACA is not offering refunds for paid subscribers.
If you choose to upgrade we advise you to opt out of renewing your ACA subscription when you receive your renewal notice in August next year.