Currently, if a Resident receives one hour of supervision a week, it would take them nearly four years to finish their hours. If they work 40 hours a week with one hour of supervision, they would end up with 8,000 total hours before finishing their supervision hours. Even if they receive two hours of supervision per week, they would end up with 4,000 total hours, which is in excess of current requirements (regardless of whether they are reduced as this petition requests). I have known many Residents who have finished all of their clinical hours, but have to stay as Residents for months (costing them thousands of dollars) only to complete supervision hours. I think we should consider 150 supervision hours as a requirement instead of 200.

In addition, graduates of CACREP Doctoral programs can count their Internship hours for "up to 900 hours of the residency requirement and up to 100 of the required hours of supervision". One option that would help out some people would be to also count the same number of Practicum and Internship hours from non-CACREP accredited Doctoral degrees in Counseling and related fields, provided that the individual applying for licensure already has a Master's degree that meets the Board's requirements for licensure as an LPC. This change would help recognize already obtained valuable experiences these individuals have and help increase access to mental healthcare in Virginia.

I have more mixed feelings about reducing total hours and direct hours, but I do know that our requirements are much higher than some other states.

Some commenters here have mentioned that our current standards make it easier to become licensed in other states, but an accurate understanding of the Counseling Compact is that one only has to be licensed in their home state to practice under the Compact - the goal is that we do not need to meet licensure requirements in other states. With that said, even with some of these changes, such as the number of supervision hours, we would still have higher requirements than the vast majority of states. Thank you for considering my thoughts.