Recently I attended the annual FMHCA (Florida Mental Health Counseling Association) conference, and was fortunate enough to hear a keynote presentation from Carol Bobby, who is the President and CEO of CACREP (Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs). In this second post of a two-part series, I will I will pass along the very helpful information she provided about CACREP.
Benefits we are just beginning to have in becoming accredited:
- Strength of one voice
- Uniformity of education
- License portability
- Transparency to the public
- Clarity to legislators
Why CACREP?
CACREP defines the common core, requires supervised clinical practice, values counselor identity, assess student learning outcomes, has credibility, has name recognition, requires multiple levels of review, and revises it’s standards regularly.
Another reason for CACREP accreditation? 81.7% of legal sanctions were against graduates from non CACREP programs.
The Rise of CACREP
In 2009 the Institute of Medicine (IOM), a highly regarded organization in Washington, D.C., was commissioned by congress to look at the counseling profession. In 2010 the IOM released their report. A major finding was that the standards across the states vary so much for licensure they cannot be used for standardization. The only constant factor they discovered was the steady graduation rate from CACREP accredited schools. It is important to note that CACREP did NOT lobby for this, in actuality CACREP was not actually consulted or even informed this meeting was occurring. It is important to realize that the CACREP recommendation was made by an independent group.
As a result, by 2015 you must graduate from a CACREP program. There have been a lot of lobbying against this. One sore point is that CORE was not included. A year ago CORE did a presentation, they stated they don’t train people for clinical practice, and this is why they weren’t included in the mandate.
CACREP Truths
- Faculty hires: As of July 1, 2013 if you are a new affiliate (not core) faculty hire and you’ve never taught, you need to have a degree in Counselor Education but it doesn’t have to be in a CACREP program, although it’s preferable. If you are already hired, you are grandfathered for life.
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Psychology licensure: Psychology is a different profession and their professional organization is the American Psychological Association (APA), not the ACA. APA says entry is at the doctoral level; this is an APA problem and not a CACREP problem.
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Merger: The CACREP and CORE merger in 2007 failed over professional identity issues; but they came up with an affiliation agreement. As a result, these two bodies are working together on rehabilitation standards. CACREP and CoRE are not at war.
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Research: Lots of research since early 2000 indicates that graduating from a CACREP program does make a difference. Even for those graduating from non-CACREP programs, the standards gap has narrowed as a result of these schools attempting to meet CACREP standards. In addition, faculty productivity in CACREP programs is higher.
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Size: CACREP is a small organization, until a year ago it had three staff members, now it has 6.75.
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Founders: CACREP was founded by ACA; by counselors just like you.
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Grandfathering: There is a seven year grandfathering period, and applicants for licensure prior to this act are grandfathered for life. More specifically, according to the position statement found on the CACREP website: “beginning 7 years from enactment, an applicant for licensure must posses a masters or higher level degree ….”
Yours in the Joy of Knowledge,
Dr. Barbara LoFrisco
* All of this information is the result of a personal communication from Carol Bobby, CACREP President & CEO on February 7, 2014 at the FMHCA annual conference in Lake Mary, FL.
