Last week, the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB) announced that they are pausing plans to require member boards to use the EPPP Part 2 as a condition of Psychologist licensure. They had faced fierce resistance to the mandate, including a recent Federal Trade Commission complaint and a coalition of states looking at developing an alternative exam.
Equity and Justice
Write a letter to the editor: Drop the ASWB exams
Some problems can have large impacts, and still go unnoticed by the public and policymakers. ASWB’s racist exams for social work licensure are a great example. When people learn of the problems with social work exams, they tend to be rightly horrified. But most people don’t know about the problem.
A letter to the editor of your local newspaper can be a great way to raise awareness of this issue, especially in states actively considering alternate pathways to licensure. Here’s a quick guide to writing one.
Journal article: Clinical exams in mental health do not meet testing industry standards
Regular readers here know that when it comes to clinical exams for mental health licensure, I’m not a fan. A recent article of mine, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Mental Health and Clinical Psychology, tackles a key component of the legal underpinning for these exams. As I explain, despite the claims of exam developers, clinical exams in mental health care do not appear to meet basic testing industry standards.
The mental health workforce shortage solution is right there
There is a severe mental health workforce shortage in the US. You have heard this time and time again. In a time of unprecedented demand for mental health care – and deaths from lack of it – we simply don’t have enough therapists. And the therapists we do have aren’t representative of the communities they serve.
The solutions proposed for this problem so far are trivial. But there is a readily available solution to the mental health workforce shortage. It could immediately grow the field by thousands of qualified practitioners. It would dramatically improve diversity within the field at the same time. Even better, it would cost states virtually nothing to implement, and could be done in a week.
The ASWB Clinical Exam reckoning has begun
This week, legislators in Maryland introduced a pair of bills (SB0871, SB0872) to let clinical social workers get licensed without first taking the ASWB Clinical Exam. Other jurisdictions are likely to follow. The current social work exams, like all clinical exams in mental health care, simply don’t work. Worse, they fail in remarkably biased ways. Professionals, the policymakers, and the public are all catching on to the sham.