Emotional support animals (ESAs), and therapists writing ESA letters for clients, are frequent topics around here. After years of overuse, the FAA allowed airlines to ban ESAs from passenger cabins early this year, and every major domestic airline has done so. Now California has developed new rules for therapists wanting to write ESA letters, most commonly for clients who want an ESA in a housing situation that does not allow pets.
Ben Caldwell
Major changes are coming to California BBS supervision rules in 2022
If you’ve been confused by recent announcements related to California BBS supervision rules, you’re not alone. The Board of Behavioral Sciences (BBS), which governs LMFTs, LPCCs, and LCSWs in the state, has been trying to get word out about three sets of supervision rule changes that are all happening on January 1, 2022. As of that date, remaining waivers expire, new regulations take effect, and new statutes come into effect as well. Here’s what you need to know.
Prologue: A poem for new grad students
I wrote this poem several years ago, and republish it each fall as a welcome to students beginning their graduate studies in the mental health professions.
Every fall, the universities where I teach enroll dozens of new students into our family therapy programs. Our new students tend to be immensely talented, and many of them (as at any school) are also immensely anxious as they begin their journey.
A therapist directory with the scale — and killer feature — to challenge Psychology Today
A couple of years ago, I wrote about some smaller therapist directories who were trying to take on Psychology Today’s directory. Now, there’s a new therapist directory with the scale — and the killer feature — to challenge PT’s dominance.
This change in California child abuse reporting took 20 years
Almost eight years ago, I wrote about how California’s Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act was naive and discriminatory. By applying one set of child abuse reporting mandates to consensual heterosexual intercourse, and a very different, stricter set of reporting mandates to other forms of consensual sexual activity, the law plainly discriminated against LGBT adolescents in same-sex relationships. It also failed to address typical adolescent sexual development, making intercourse non-reportable in many instances where other activities adolescents would engage in during the run-up to intercourse were mandated reports.
That law has finally changed.
2021 Changes to the California MFT Clinical Exam
Starting January 1, 2021, there are meaningful changes to the California MFT Clinical Exam, set forth in the new BBS Exam Plan. At Ben Caldwell Labs, we’re adding some video segments to our online prep program to address some new content areas. However, the most notable changes are in the balance of content on the exam.
Compare the old breakdown of question topics to the new one:
Mean salary data for Psychologists, Counselors, MFTs, and Social Workers [interactive chart]
How much salary are you likely to make as a Psychologist, counselor, MFT, or social worker? Are salaries rising or falling relative to inflation? The following chart shows 13 years of therapist salary data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
How coronavirus is affecting the California BBS [Updated 6/2/20]
I’ve gotten a lot of questions in the past few days about how COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) is affecting the California BBS, or how it is likely to. I’m rounding up those questions here in hopes of making it easier to find the information you need. This post most recently updated on June 2, to include information about new BBS waivers.
Exams
Will license exams be cancelled or postponed?
The BBS-contracted testing provider Pearson VUE closed all of its US and Canada testing centers in March, and has been gradually reopening them since May. All exams scheduled while centers were closed have been cancelled and you will need to reschedule.
If your registration expired or is scheduled to expire between March 31 and June 30, 2020, see the information below on Law & Ethics Exam rule waivers.
Is therapy more effective when people pay a fee for it?
The idea that clients should pay at least a small fee for therapy in order for therapy to be effective has been around for a long time. But it doesn’t hold up as well as you might think.
This is one of those things that I learned in grad school and simply accepted as truth for a long time. And then I was startled when I actually looked into it. Not only does forcing clients to pay even a small amount for therapy not help outcomes, some evidence suggests it makes outcomes worse.
California’s AB5 signed. How will it impact therapists’ work as independent contractors?
Despite what you may have heard, the passage of AB5 will not cause the sky to fall.
California’s independent contractor bill, Assembly Bill 5, was described in media reports as an effort to regulate the gig economy, more specifically Uber and Lyft drivers. It actually impacts many, many more workers than that. But it doesn’t change anything for master’s-level mental health professionals in the state. The change that matters for us happened more than a year ago, and most employers have already adapted to it.