I am the Director of the Doctoral Program in Counseling Psychology at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM. Our program is accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA). The MA program within our department is CACREP accredited and we have a strong working relationship.

I join counseling professionals from across the country to urge you to stop the proposed counselor licensing regulations that would require graduation from a CACREP-accredited program for licensure in Virginia.  Research shows that counselors who have graduated from CACREP programs are not more effective in their work with clients or in their service to their communities. There is also no evidence to support that counselors from CACREP-accredited programs are more ethical or more helpful to clients. There is a great need for mental health services. A regulation limiting practice would not serve the people of Virginia well, given that a majority of master’s level counselor training programs are not CACREP-accredited. A restriction such as this would negatively impact current students and alumni from non-CACREP affiliated VA programs; negatively impact the public by reducing access to qualified counselors; negatively impact relocation of qualified and competent counselors from non-CACREP programs; and reduce overall services available to VA residents.

You may be wondering, “Why aren’t more programs CACREP accredited?”  This is largely because those accreditation standards are arbitrarily restrictive about who can be counted as part of faculty resources for the program, squeezing out any mental health professional who hasn’t graduated from a CACREP program.  Thus, someone like me, who graduated from an APA-accredited program cannot be centrally involved in teaching in our CACREP courses.  For academic departments that have several different mental health degrees, this restriction is unnecessarily burdensome as we all do essentially the same tasks. No other accrediting body for mental health professionals has this rule.

I urge you to stop this proposal and ensure that the people of Virginia will continue to rely on the strength of state regulations that are not unduly influenced by the agenda of an independent organization that is just trying to create a monopoly.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.