The counseling profession has expanded and advanced tremendously in the last century. A field dedicated to promoting and cultivating mental health wellness for all people, professional counselors are highly trained practitioners who foster the holistic wellbeing of individuals, couples, and families by using a clinical lens to address and combat the symptoms of mental health disorders.  Social work is an age-old profession that is formidable in its own right; it is fair to say that some of the roots of the counseling profession lie in the field of social work. Moreover, the counseling profession is moving in a (positive) direction that empowers and endorses advocacy as a value. That is, advocacy for individuals, communities, and the profession as a whole. These values, as well as social empowerment/change, are at the crux of the beliefs of social work. Frankly, it’s about time our profession caught up and recognized that many of the presenting concerns our clients bring to therapy are critically impacted by, or the direct result of, systemic oppression – not merely personal choices. Yes, there is much we can learn from the field of social work.

Likewise, there is much that social workers can learn from us, particularly as it pertains to utilizing a clinical lens in the therapeutic process. I am skeptical of allowing LCSWs to supervise residents in counseling without additional training. Don’t let the name in the license fool you; a brief glance at the MSW curriculum of your choice will quickly reveal that counseling programs and social work programs are training their budding professionals in very different ways. Furthermore, social work programs and counseling programs are accredited by completely different bodies, meaning the standards of excellence, ethics, and practice are different. Are there similarities? Sure – about the same number of similarities between apples and oranges. This proposed policy makes it seem like we’re talking about tangerines and nectarines and we’re not. If LCSWs were to supervise counseling students, I believe they should engage in additional training that mirrors the clinical skills, approaches, and foundational/fundamental beliefs counselors are trained to embody. As a counseling intern who currently works with MSW interns, our programs requirements are vastly different, from the number of hours we need to obtain to the case conceptualizations and recordings we have to log. Again, I’m not totally against the idea of having LCSWs supervise residents in counseling; however, that should not ever happen without additional training on the LCSWs part. Besides, social workers have been screaming for years about how different our professions are. Maybe it’s time we believed them.