Our licensing boards....aka, "The Gift That Keeps on Giving", they're better than the Jelly of the Month Club. Just when you think the dust has settled on the nonsense one of them finds another reason to justify their existence.

More Board Regulation on the Way?

This time the LMFT Board wants to talk about adding yet another required ce topic to your renewal hours. Someone thinks it's a good idea to train every licensee in the State of Texas in Crisis Intervention even if you never plan to utilize that specialization. That's right, because there was a shooting in Uvalde we now need to train everyone, probably every renewal cycle on a specialization that 95% of you will never use. Your government at work, again. BTW, a real crisis intervention training program is usually about 6 hours of training, but your board thinks a 1 hr high-level overview class every two years is going to qualify you to show up after a mass-casualty event and contribute. Really?

Speak Up or Sit Down

Phillip and I plan to attend this Friday's meetings and make our thoughts known. We're not holding our breath that anyone will listen because the boards have probably already made up their minds. They've had a year or more to lobby each other for something like this under the guise that Joe Citizen will be better off.

We're all for a positive focus on Joe Citizen but the last thing he needs in a crisis is several thousand licensed mental health counselors descending on his town like unpaid, Samaritan locusts then disappearing two days later. That leaves him and his town in worse shape than he was before they arrived. Here's what our comments will consist of.

Public Comments Regarding Required Crisis Management CE Training

Phillip will go first and pose the following common sense questions:

1. Is there a problem in need of a solution? And what is it? 881.21 (g) Do you have any empirical proof that this problem exists? 881.21 (I) (5)(6) And may I see it?

2. If so, is this a problem better handled by the private sector or by more state regulation?

3. Is there a private sector solution already in place?

4. If there is let's quantify it. Is it adequate for handling the problem?

5. If there is a private sector solution in place and it's infrastructure and resources are adequate for dealing with the posited problem, then why do we need more government regulation?

I would love to hear some discussion of those very legitimate questions, please.

Batting in the #2 Spot in Your Lineup

Then Kathleen will follow and volunteer to answer questions 3,4, and 5

Phillip's question #3 asked if there was a private sector solution already in place. The answer is, yes, there is. Most counties, school districts, and many, many medium to large corporations have an EAP Program in place. Those programs offer certification in crisis management for "black swan" events, so, yes there is already an infrastructure with trained counselors in place. Those EAP programs pay their trained counselors to participate in Black Swan events as opposed to a pro-bono group of volunteers.

As to his question #4, is the EAP Program adequate to handle a Uvalde type event? While each school district or county may not have the total number of trained counselors needed for a larger event the EAP providers do have enough resources throughout their network and would be able to marshal those resources and stage them in the appropriate geographic area. And pay them for their time and travel.

His question #5 probably makes the board's proposed solution unnecessary. There is a private sector solution in place with an adequate state-wide network of trained counselors who want to be there and would be compensated to do so.

If the board feels that existing solution is inadequate then the first step would be to examine their own regulations and remove any regulatory roadblocks keeping the private sector from improving what already exists. Let's not simply pass yet another required regulation and force behavior and expense on its licensee base for something the vast majority of them have no desire to be a part of or specialize in.

Summary

Uvalde was a sad event with an extremely poor response action by law enforcement. It was not a public cry for gun control, more knee-jerk ce regulation for counselors, or laws that we'll fail to enforce. The public sector will address most problems if government busy-bodies will just stay out of the way. And in this case the public sector has already dealt with the issue of voluntary crisis management training.

Our boards need to find a real problem to fix, like over-regulation of licensees.