TPC Journal-V6, Issue 4- FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor /Volume 6, Issue 4 297 CACREP was established, but most programs were weak in that many required only 30 to 36 credits; there was no standardized curriculum, and clinical practica and internships were rare. CACREP has led the profession in establishing minimum standards for counselor preparation. Today in the United States, when a counselor graduates from a CACREP-accredited program, employers and the general public know the counselor is well-prepared to provide counseling services to clients. I am proud that my graduate advisor and mentor, Dr. Robert Stripling at the University of Florida, was a major leader in establishing CACREP for the benefit of the counseling profession. The third major accomplishment of the counseling profession is the success of the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC, 2015). NBCC was created in 1982 when counselor education programs varied in quality and only a few states had licensure laws that provided a credential that demonstrated a counselor was well-educated and knowledgeable. Now that state licensure for counselors has been accomplished in all states, NBCC has developed into a major force in the continued development of the counseling profession. When the American Counseling Association is mired down by an impossible division-based governance structure and is pondering whether ACA can take a stand on important issues, NBCC, with its small board that has a strong commitment to advancing the counseling profession, has provided lobbying in Washington, DC, and throughout the United States to ensure counselors have the right to practice their profession and have access to jobs for which they are qualified. NBCC also has led the profession in supporting the development of the counseling profession throughout the world. By administering federal scholarships and creating their own scholarships, NBCC has supported the continued growth of the profession and encourages entry into needed areas in counseling (e.g., rural, minority services, military). 2. Which of the major accomplishments that you listed above was the most difficult to achieve for the counseling profession, and why? Achieving counselor licensure in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico was the most difficult accomplishment. Counselors had to organize separately in 52 political jurisdictions, work together cooperatively and settle differences among themselves, overcome external resistance, particularly from psychologists and social workers, and often go year after year to state legislatures in order to get a state counselor licensure bill passed. Accomplishing such a monumental and difficult task in only 33 years still amazes me. There was tremendous resistance to counselor licensure from many organizations, including state legislatures, psychologists, social workers and special interest groups. Ironically, the psychology profession actually started the counselor licensure movement by default because counselors were forced to seek licensure (or state regulation) when they started being accused by psychologists of practicing psychology without a license. Generally, states do not favor regulating professions. In order to convince legislators that the counseling profession needed to be regulated, counselors argued that the general public cannot distinguish a qualified counselor from one who is not qualified and that unregulated counselors have the potential of doing significant harm to the public. State regulation of a profession defies the concept of free enterprise and has the potential of keeping qualified individuals from practicing a profession for which they have been prepared. Once a state starts regulating a profession, the process is quite expensive and must be monitored by legislatures to ensure that applicants and licensees are being treated fairly. Paradoxically, counselors who consider themselves helpers had to present arguments to legislators that some counselors had the potential of inflicting substantial harm upon members of the public who did not have the capacity to determine whether a particular counselor was competent.