Counselor training questioned

OLYMPIA – Four months after state lawmakers balked at a proposal to do away with the professional term “registered counselor,” a new state audit is again urging that the credential – held by roughly 18,000 people in Washington – be eliminated.

Proponents of the change say the credentialing requirements are so feeble that they’re virtually meaningless. All it takes to become a registered counselor in Washington state is a background check, a fee and a half-day HIV-safety class. No education, specialized training, exam or supervised experience is needed.

“The way it’s written up, anybody can be a registered counselor,” said state Rep. Don Barlow, D-Spokane. “You don’t even need a high school diploma. You just pay the $40, take that class, and you’re in.”

The recommendation, contained in a broader performance audit of health credentialing released Tuesday by State Auditor Brian Sonntag, echoes calls from Barlow, many licensed mental health professionals and state health officials for more stringent requirements. Barlow, who has a master’s degree, is a licensed mental health counselor.

“The public assumes that there’s certainly more oversight than this,” said Sonntag. “They’re putting their trust, faith and health in the hands of these folks.”

Since January, the Washington Professional Counselors’ Association has been fighting to preserve the credential. There is a vast range of counseling needs out there, group secretary Kate Abbott said Tuesday, and many registered counselors have years of experience and advanced degrees. The group supports higher credentialing standards, she said, but not doing away entirely with the category of registered counselor.

“There could be as many as a quarter-million clients that could be left high and dry,” said Abbott, a registered counselor in Seattle.

Lawmakers and state officials are particularly concerned about the high rate of client complaints about registered counselors compared with other health professions. A state task force convened by Gov. Chris Gregoire last year found that while the number of registered counselors barely increased from 1999 to 2005, complaints about them rose 143 percent. And a recent Seattle Times series found that registered counselors are responsible for a disproportionately high rate of sexual misconduct allegations.

“My whole drive on this is about patient safety,” said state Secretary of Health Mary Selecky. “In order to protect patients, we have to beef up or tighten the credentialing process.”

Washington is one of just two states with a registered counselor credential; the other is Maine. The credential was created by state lawmakers in 1987 as a way to bring counselors under regulation by state health officials.

Earlier this year, Barlow and 17 other lawmakers tried to tighten the standards with House Bill 1993. Among the co-sponsors: local Reps. Lynn Schindler, R-Otis Orchards, and Timm Ormsby, D-Spokane.

The product of a months-long study, Barlow’s bill would have eliminated the designation “registered counselor.” Instead, two new credentials would have been created for anyone doing therapeutic counseling:

“An “agency-affiliated counselor” would have to work for a state-regulated facility or agency;

“A “mental health advisor” would have to be part of a group practice supervised by a state-licensed mental-health professional and would need at least a bachelor’s degree.

The proposal was aimed primarily at registered counselors who use their state credential to hang out a shingle and open their own private practice, Barlow said. It applied only to those doing mental health work – not to peer counselors, wellness counselors or others who don’t need state credentialing.

The bill sailed through the House of Representatives 94 to 3, only to sink in the Senate after Abbott’s group protested.

“If I were to walk out on my clients tomorrow and just say, ‘Sorry, I’m not a counselor anymore,’ that would be unprofessional, unethical and damaging, and that’s what this bill would cause,” testified Miriam Dyak, who runs L.I.F.E. Energy Counseling in Seattle and is president of the registered counselors’ group.

Several said they feared that their degrees would be worthless under the bill’s standards.

Richard Miles, a Buddhist monk and counselor in Olympia, said that if the bill passed, his Ph.D. “would be null and void.” Abbott, who holds a master’s degree in body-centered counseling from the California Institute of Integral Studies, also told lawmakers that that four-year degree wouldn’t count toward state certification.

Lawmakers tabled the bill and instead ordered the task force to meet with registered counselors and try to reach agreement. Abbott said Tuesday that she’s hopeful the group will recommend keeping the credential but requiring ethics training and other new standards, like risk-assessment classes to detect suicidal clients and refer them to licensed professionals.

“The idea for a master’s degree for everybody doesn’t make sense if what you’re trying to do is just teach someone to quit smoking,” she said.