Ressources Mutuelles Assistance, an entity of the VYV group, offers psycho-social support for employees who have to deal with a complicated or painful moment in life. Its teams have set up “conviviality calls” to provide help, support or sometimes simply a presence that preserves social ties.
Life is never a long calm river. It is to provide support for those who encounter an event which they find difficult to cope with that the teams of RMA (Ressources Mutuelles Assistance) assistancean entity of the VYV group, are mobilized every day.
“We assume that it is up to the person to contact us,” explains Stéphanie Barré, head of the “psycho-social support” department at RMA. To listen to members in difficulty, ten psychologists and eight social workers who make up the only in-house psycho-social support team at a “helper” in France take turns managing situations that are always very different.
The effects of confinement
But many of their interventions in the form of courtesy calls have shared a common point since the start of the health crisis, the effects of confinement on people who are already most often weakened. “In fact, we hardly had to intervene with patients with Covid-19, says Stéphanie Barré, but this period of confinement which fell on us all at once generated a lot of difficulties for people. who were on long-term sick leave or who were about to resume an activity when the crisis broke out”.
Complicated administrative problems to manage in a country where many services were suspended or difficult to reach due to confinement, but also situations of great loneliness in times when everyone had to live isolated from others, also fear of contamination by the coronavirus, suffering when resuming a social life when the confinement eased, as many cases as the RMA teams had to manage since mid-March.
“The issues on which we intervene are evolving”, specifies the head of the “psycho-social support” department, referring to members who had to be assisted during this crisis on subjects ranging from the loss of social ties to the conditions for s adapt to telework imposed by the circumstances.
Support in tough times
Usually, the conviviality calls of the RMA team are very focused on the support to be provided in serious moments of life, arrival of old age, disability, bereavement, separation and of course long-term work stoppages due to sickness. “Anything that causes suffering”, summarizes Stéphanie Barré.
And all the scenarios are to be considered: “For people with a serious illness, returning to work after a long break can raise difficulties far beyond rehabilitation in the world of the professional. Sometimes you have to manage situations with those around you who are wondering, for example, how to approach a colleague who has returned after having faced cancer, how to choose the words to hear from them… and then there are also subjects that we have to deal with other company departments, human resources or occupational health services, when the illness leads to a disability that requires professional mobility…”, recalls Stéphanie Barré.