Action Alert: Implement Social Work Licensure This Year!

Action Alert!

Call your Senate and Assembly member to urge implementation of social work licensure THIS YEAR!

To find your Senator: https://www.nysenate.gov/find-my-senator

To find your Assembly member: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/search/

Click here for a Sample Letter to Your Legislator

 Main Points:

  • Unlicensed providers from NYS entities are providing diagnosis to people suffering from mental health disorders.
  • A “temporary” exemption was put into place 14 years ago and lawmakers want to extend it to 2021, giving state entities a staggering 19 years to come into compliance.
  • This deplorable protracted exemption is discriminatory to New York’s most vulnerable citizens – people who are predominantly poor and underserved.
  • The exemption follows 28 years of negotiation before social work became one of the state’s licensed professions. 

Your engagement on this issue is crucial!

Hold agencies accountable to the licensing requirements that was rightfully enacted in 2002. Stand with NASW-NYS, NASW-NYC, the New York Society for Clinical Social Work, and the NYS Association of Deans of Schools of Social Work to preserve the quality of care for all New Yorkers seeking mental health services.

Background

In 2002, after at least 28 years of negotiation between the legislature, stakeholder provider groups and trade associations, the practice of social work became one of the state’s licensed professions.  In doing so, a minimum standard of education, experience and exam requirements was established to assure that individuals providing mental health services, specifically, the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness were qualified to do so. Just prior to the passage of such legislation, several state agencies noted they would need time to move their workforce into compliance. As such, a temporary exemption from licensure (of 6 years beyond the delayed effective date, of 2004) was included in the law for individuals in the employ of programs and services regulated, operated, funded or approved by the Office of Mental Health (OMH), the former Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities now the Office for People With Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD), the Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS) and local mental hygiene or social service districts.   The list of “exempt agencies” was subsequently amended to add the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), the Department of Health (DOH), the State Office for the Aging (SOFA) and the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS).

Two additional extensions have been passed since the agencies reported they were unable to meet the dates for compliance, the last one passing in the 2013-14 budget giving the agencies until July 1, 2016 to meet the licensing requirements passed in 2002.

After 14 years, exempt agencies are again requesting an extension.  As such, the Executive Budget proposal and Assembly one house budget bill propose an additional five-year extension.  The agencies have affixed a high price tag to compliance, citing the need to replace all staff with licensees.  Such an assertion is false.  Only those providing a diagnosis and providing treatment of a mental illness need be licensed.

In response to agency articulated concerns, The New York State and City chapters of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the New York Society for Clinical Social Work and the New York State Association of Deans of the Schools of Social Work, have crafted language (which is currently the Senate one house language) that will mitigate cost concerns, move the field into compliance and preserve the quality of care. The language:

  • provides further clarification of tasks not requiring a license,
  • provides further clarification of tasks that may be delegated to non-licensed multi-disciplinary team members,
  • clarifies that any individual rendering a diagnosis of a mental illness must have (at a minimum) one face to face interaction with client and be appropriately authorized to provide such a diagnosis,
  • provides for further exemptions for some professions,
  • provides for an additional grand parenting provision,
  • reiterates provision in original statute that allows those currently employed in an exempt agency to continue providing tasks they are currently providing.

 

We have also advocated for funding to support ESL and culturally sensitive test preparation.