I’ve put the finishing touches on a booklet to update Basics of California Law for LMFTs, LPCCs, and LCSWs. The booklet addresses new laws impacting master’s level therapists in the state for 2016.
There weren’t enough changes for this year to warrant a whole new edition of the book, but there are a number of new laws worth knowing if you practice in California. The update includes new rules surrounding:
Interns and associates in the master’s level mental health professions in California will take a law and ethics exam in their first year of registration, under an exam restructure taking effect in January 2016.
Licensing exams do not assess your effectiveness as a therapist. They arenāt meant to. That bears repeating: License exams do not assess your effectiveness as a therapist. They are a licensing boardās best effort at assessing whether you have the minimal knowledge (not skill, knowledge) to be able to practice independently without being a danger to the public. Thatās all. When therapists decry the fact that license exams are nothing like doing therapy, theyāre right ā and their point isnāt relevant. Exams arenāt supposed to be like therapy. If you want to know how good you are as a therapist, look elsewhere, because exams are not and are not intended to be a barometer of clinical effectiveness. They are a somewhat crude assessment of safety for independent practice.
With that aim in mind, do they work? Do licensing exams make therapists safer?
Thereās remarkably little data to answer that question.
Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed into law by Governor Mike Pence last week, has raised a great deal of controversy. In the psychotherapy community, the law could have an immediate impact in the form of professional events and conferences moving out of the state. In the longer term, the bill is likely to impact training and practice by making it harder for universities and licensing boards to discipline discriminatory behavior.
I’ve talked a fair amount in this blog about the need for better license portability across states. True license reciprocity, where one state automatically recognizes another state’s licensure, is rightly the long-term goal of some professional associations in mental health. (I’ve argued that telehealth will help us get there.)