TPC Journal V8, Issue 1 - FULL ISSUE

92 The Professional Counselor | Volume 8, Issue 1 process that required account creation. It was discovered that of the 50 states, 10 (Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Tennessee) have two distinct licenses that operate as a tiered approach to professional counselor licensure. To clarify, states utilizing provisional counseling licenses (e.g., Missouri) or associate designations (e.g., North Carolina) were not included, as they were determined to be a subset of a license or a path toward a license as opposed to a separate and distinct license found with multiple-tier licenses. In addition, states using levels of progression (e.g., Utah) or providing multiple types of counseling licenses (e.g., marriage and family, drug and alcohol, grief, supervisor designations) also were omitted to simplify the research. In short, second-tier licenses for this research focused on counseling licenses specific to mental health with the ability to practice independently and were uniquely separate from the first tier. This resulted in a total of 60 licenses specific to professional counseling reviewed in this research. Given the broad scope of information available, the researchers separated results into two areas: first-tier licenses from 50 states (i.e., 49 states and D.C.) and second-tier licenses from 10 states, which were typically identified with additional descriptors in the licensure title (e.g., Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor). Moreover, it was determined that second-tier licenses tended to require slightly more information from applicants related to more graduate training and post-training clinical direct and indirect counseling-related hours. Categories and tier license data can be found in Table 1. First-Tier Licenses A review of the licensure applications for first-tier professional counseling licenses revealed common trends in the licensure requirements for the 49 states and D.C. These included requiring: (a) educational requirements, (b) completed client direct and indirect counseling-related hours, (c) examination, (d) application fee, (e) supplemental documentation to the application (e.g., criminal background check, letters of reference, photograph, birth certificate, videotape of counseling session), and (f) attestation of the applicant related to past behaviors (e.g., state licensure history, criminal history, mental health history, ethical complaints against applicant, professional organization complaints against applicant, and liability insurance history). Educational requirements. Of the 50 first-tier licenses reviewed, a total of 30 course-related topics were identified as required. Courses most frequently identified were connected to CACREP core curriculum standards. To point, both research and program evaluation and group counseling and group work (also identified as group dynamics on applications) were identified by 66% ( n = 33) of the state applications. Other core standard–related education areas were assessment and appraisal at 64% ( n = 32); human growth and development, professional counseling orientation and ethics, and social and cultural foundations at 62% each ( n = 31); and finally career development at 60% ( n = 30). After these seven CACREP core-related standards, there was a significant drop in representation. Helping relationships, which is the eighth CACREP core standard, was identified by 46% ( n = 23) of the states, and counseling theories and techniques by 42% ( n = 21). A third cluster of courses seemed to be more specialized, likely related to specialty areas in the 2016 CACREP standards. These included family counseling (24%, n = 12), substance abuse (20%, n = 10), diagnosis (20%, n = 10), psychopathology (18%, n = 9), and clinical supervision (16%, n = 8). A fourth and final clustering of courses seemed to be highly specific to a small number of states. For example, psychopharmacology and human sexuality were required by five states (10%), and even more finitely required were courses such as a course on the chronically mental ill (Washington) and a course on understanding HIV (Florida). Thus, when comparing the 50 state applications, 42% ( n = 21) of the applications required all eight of the CACREP-related core standard courses. Interestingly, 22% ( n = 11) of the applications required two or fewer of the eight CACREP-related core standard courses and 36% ( n = 18) did not specifically note any of the core standards as required.