Psychological Care and Support

The Psychological Care and Support (PCS) unit was conceptualized in 2005, to provide care for the carers through the Voluntary Counselling Testing (VCT) component, as a counsellor care intervention to reduce stress and prevent burnout. This unit under SNAP focuses on providing psychological support to Health care Workers (HCW) across the Health Sector as a whole. The availability of PCS unit ensures that the Health sector continue providing quality HIV services.

In 2008, the PCS unit decentralized its services in all regions. The rational for decentralization was that there was a paradigm shift of VCT to HIV Testing Services (HTS) which further included all health care workers that they should provide initiated HIV testing to patients. Therefore this brought change to further provide PCS services to all health care workers, hence there was need for psychologist to be easily accessed by Health care workers. The other reason was that SNAP has decentralized its services thus calls for the PCS service to be decentralized in line with the SNAP program to reach more health care workers by having regional psychologist.

The Psychological Care and Support unit of the Swaziland National AIDS Program (SNAP) is tasked with providing psychological support to health care workers. That is, the unit is focused on health care workers in the health sector as a whole. For health care workers across the health sector to continue providing quality HIV services, both their physical and psychological well-being must be addressed adequately. In 2009 the PCS program collaborated with Public Sector HIV/AIDS Coordinating Committee (PSHACC) in the provision of psychological services which is to all Government departments as per request.  In 2013 the program expanded with additional human resource to scale up service provision to health care workers in the country.

The PCS program is coordinated at SNAP and it also functions with National Psychological Care and Support Technical Working Group members as the following : WHO, URC, Wellness Center, ICAP, EGPAF, MSF,NERCHA, MoH Workplace focal person, MoH SDI, Cheshire Homes , Hospice at Home, MoH National Psychiatric Hospital, Private Sector ( Clinical Psychologist ), TASC, PSI and Social Welfare.

The mandate of Psychological Care and Support unit

The Psychological Care and Support unit of the Swaziland National AIDS Program (SNAP) is tasked with providing psychological support to health care workers. That is, the unit is focused on health care workers in the health sector as a whole. For health care workers across the health sector to continue providing quality HIV services, both their physical and psychological well-being must be addressed adequately

psc

PRIORITY STRATEGIES
  1. Strengthen the health system using health workforce as one of the six building blocks
  2. Strengthen Coordination of Psychological Care and Support
  3. Strengthen the Technical Skills to Provide Quality and Comprehensive psychological support
  4. Advocate for increased resources to support the programme
  5. Develop appropriate programmes on psychological support
  6. Strengthen Monitoring& Evaluation and Research