The CACREP controversy continues…a few months ago I wrote a post about dispelling CACREP myths based on what Carol Bobby, president and CEO of CACREP, said. In two-part series, I will present the other side – the viewpoint of counselors.
Recently in ACA Connect, a listserv for ACA members, there have been some very interesting conversations regarding CACREP.
In case you didn’t know, CACREP stands for Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, and is quickly becoming the gold standard for accreditation. The arguments for CACREP include the creation of consistent standards that all counseling education programs must meet. More specifically, there is some evidence that graduation from a CACREP-accredited program creates higher quality counselors. What is troubling for many counselors is that graduation from a CACREP-accredited program may become the requirement to practice therapy, more so than state licensure. And this is not just a concern for current or prospective students:
Larry Epp, President of the Licensed Clinical Professional Counselors of Maryland, states “most counselors who graduated and obtained their licenses years ago think of graduate program accreditation as something that no longer concerns them. They have no idea that licensing boards, government programs and, potentially in the future, private insurance panels may start to restrict participation by the training you obtained in the past. CACREP-unaffiliated counselors will find themselves on gradually dwindling islands of practice. The sufficiency of state licensure is being challenged.” (source: Michael Reeder, Advocacy Chair LCPCM, ACA Connect, May 4, 2014).
Here are some of the concerns, according to recent (early May 2014) communication via ACA Connect:
- ~ “The exclusion of other professions from supervision and core facility positions, leading to the loss of training diversity, the threatened extinction of masters level counseling psychology programs, and the invalidation of supervised experience from the past when counselor supervisors were not available.” (Michael Reeder)
- ~ “The definite loss of trusted counselors from the TRICARE system in light of the mental health difficulties of returning veterans and their families.” (Michael Reeder)
- ~ “CACREP has a memo on their website professing support for grandfathering — but when they pay grandfathering little attention in their other PR and talk about CACREP as the gold standard, that leaves believers at licensing boards and other programs with little incentive to want to grandfather in those who are ‘inferior’.” (Michael Reeder)
- ~ “The presentation (a workshop at the 2014 ACA conference in Hawaii) was extremely negative about Counseling Psychology in particular, and alternative accreditation programs like MPCAC.” (Shari Tresky)
- ~ “After reading the concerned counselors blog I can’t [sic] wrap my mind around why Anyone [sic] would want ti [sic] exclude 70% of counselors from practicing.” (Isual Davis)
Want more? Check out the website concernedcounselors.org. This website summarizes the concerns, provides a link to many different articles, and has an email discussion list.
Yours in the Joy of Knowledge,
Dr. Barbara LoFrisco
