The Council for Accreditation of Counseling & Related Educational Programs (CACREP) serves as one of the four major entities of the counseling profession in the United States; the other two entities are the American Counseling Association the National Board of Certified Counselors and the American Mental Health Counselors Association.

I am a foreign national in process of naturalization and practicing LCPC in the state of Maryland. My strong opinion is that the current proposed legislation has the potential to further limit, as well as divide, the availability of quality services to the community if it is solely basing CACREP programs as a main competency/accreditation standard. In this way legislators would be creating a vacuum and another obstacle for already practicing clinicians. I foresee this proposal as a method of dividing us as professionals, rather than working on keeping us united towards the common goal.