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* It is both a pleasure and a privilege to be here.
* On behalf of President Brad Erford, Executive Director
Rich Yep, and the ACA Governing Council, I bring
greetings from the American Counseling Association, the
world’s largest organization for professional counselors
with 51,000 members in the United States and 50
additional countries. Of course, PCA is our Pennsylvania
branch and a shining star in our universe. PCA is a
terrific example of why all counselors need to belong to
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their branch. Every single counselor in the Keystone
State should be a member of the Pennsylvania
Counseling Association.
*I would like to take a moment and acknowledge your
President, Becky Willow. If you have never been
President of an ACA branch, you have no clue as to how
much work is involved. The moment that your Presidency
starts on July 1, ACA throws more forms and requests for
data at you then you can possibly imagine. Plus you
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have to do everything that your branch requires of you.
Plus you have a real job. I was going to say that you also
have a life, but when you are PCA President you can
forget about that. So as a token of ACA’s thanks, I would
like to present Becky with an ACA mug. Let’s give Becky
the thanks she deserves for all she has done for PCA.
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I hope you don’t mind that if as I go along, I make
extensive use of my notecards. This is much too much
an important gathering and august group to speak off the
top of my head.
Having said that, let me introduce you to my wife and talk
about her off the top of my head (tell ACA conference big
screen/Jumbotron story).
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I do want to save some time at the end for questions so
that I can speak to issues within ACA or the counseling
profession for which you would like an update. We can
play “Stump the ACA Chief Professional Officer”  But
that will come later.
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I didn’t come to PCA to make a sales pitch. So I am not
going to spend my time telling you about ACA’s products
and services such as books, journals, our Counseling
Today magazine (including CT online), ACA e-News,
professional networking, counseling blogs (which are
viewed over 30,000 times a month), webinars, podcasts,
600 proprietary VISTAS articles, the world’s largest
conference for counselors with 4,000 attendees, free
ethics consults, fee career consults, free private practice
consults, 12 free ce’s each year as part of your
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membership, information on insurance reimbursement,
24/7 online continuing education, and the best
malpractice insurance in the business (which is made
available at no additional charge to students). But please
do go online at www.counseling.org and check us out 
* Instead, I would like to focus on how proud we can be of
our profession and how much of what we have
accomplished is due to ACA, PCA, and our other
branches and divisions.
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I am so pleased that the theme for this year’s PCA
conference is “Transitions and Transformations”. This
gives me the chance to talk about the huge number of
accomplishments and successes our profession has
achieved in recent years, as well as talk about our
challenges.
* Everyone in this room can be very proud of how far the
counseling profession has come
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* Because I am standing between you and your lunch or a
nap (I wrote this before knowing whether I was going to
speak before or after eating), I won’t list every
accomplishment since 1908, when Frank Parsons started
the profession of counseling in Boston at the Vocational
Bureau. By the way, you might be interested in knowing
how Parsons gave our profession its name – at least as
told by the famous Sam Gladding. Parsons was a lawyer
and liked the title “counsellor” that was used to designate
a barrister in England. English lawyers spelled counsellor
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with two “ll’s” and so Parsons chopped of one of the “l’s
and adopted it for his new profession in the states.
* I will proudly tell you, as Mark Bitzman and Sela
Nagelhout wrote in Counseling Today: “The counseling
profession has come a long way since its beginnings. We
are now a proud profession characterized by a Code of
Ethics, accreditation, guidelines, competency standards,
licensure, certification, and a commitment to excellence.”
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So I would like to spend some time celebrating how far
we have come as professional counselors. And to
celebrate how professional organizations such as PCA
have been the catalyst for the advancements we have
experienced.
*We have been going through a tremendous growth spurt,
and because of that, this is a wonderful time to be in our
profession.
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* Let’s look at some accomplishments for the counseling
profession in just the last 5 years.
* Let’s start with a big one. As of October 11th, 2009, all
50 states {plus D.C. and the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico
and Guam} have licensure.
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Pennsylvania was one of the tougher nuts to crack and
became the 43rd state to pass counselor licensure in
1998. There are now over 4,000 LPC’s in the Keystone
State.
Professional counseling is now mainstream – and it is fun
for someone like me, who has seen the growth,
development, transitions and transformations of our
profession over the last 30 years, to be able to say that!
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* For the last 3 years, we have been included in
Consumer Reports’ annual report on treating depression
- In fact, not only were we included, but CR stated,
quote, “psychologists, social workers, and licensed
professional counselors receive equal helpfulness
ratings from those who had talk therapy”
When your profession is noted in Consumer
Reports, you know you have arrived.
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The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the bible for
diagnosing mental disorders, has been revising the 4th
edition for the past few years. For the first time in the
history of the DSM, professional counselors have been
accepted to conduct clinical trials for the next revision. In
fact, there were 695 counselors participating in the DSM5 revision clinical trials – 18% of the entire number of field
trial volunteers.
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* The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics now seeks input
from professional counseling - through ACA - to review
and update descriptions in the seminal Occupational
Outlook Handbook for school counselors, mental health
counselors, career counselors, substance abuse
counselors, and even marriage and family therapists –
which is interesting since they are not in our profession. I
correspond regularly with Colleen Texeira at the Bureau
of Labor Statistics about these descriptions.
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* In 2010, the Federal government decided -- for the first
time in 20 years -- to revamp Title X, the program that
provides family planning services. Counseling was the
profession asked to revamp the counseling component of
this $300M national program. They didn’t go to
psychology; they didn’t go to social work. They came to
the profession of counseling.
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* In the past, job postings for mental health professionals
did not specifically mention professional counselors.
They would often include us under “or related degree”.
We are now regularly referenced in mental health related
job listings.
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- As just one example from the recent past, the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
distributed a poster for a “staff psychologist/staff
counselor”. Five years ago, this job would have just
been listed as a “staff psychologist.” This posting
also stated that an earned degree in counselor
education was appropriate. Five years ago, they
would have only listed a degree in psychology.
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* Professional counseling is now referenced, and
professional counselors are now interviewed, along with
other mental health professions and professionals in
newspaper and magazine articles
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- An example from last year occurred in the
New York Times. On September 29th, the
Times had an article about online counseling
and stated that one particular online therapy
website had signed up 900, quote,
“psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors and
coaches”. I feel bad for the social workers
and marriage and family therapists because
they weren’t mentioned.
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- Deanna Mertz Nagel, a licensed professional
counselor, was also interviewed in that New
York Times article.
- Five years ago, professional counseling
would not have been mentioned in the New
York Times, and a professional counselor
would not have been interviewed
* We have lots of other recent advancements to
celebrate.
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* The 2009 Mental Health Parity Law now requires:
- an equal number of medical and mental health
visits.
- equal co-pays for medical and mental health visits
- equal deductibles for medical and mental health
visits
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* Because of the Mental Health Parity Law, services
provided by licensed professional counselors are now on
par with those provided by physicians
Don’t let that one slip by you, so let me say it again:
Because of the Mental Health Parity Law, services
provided by licensed professional counselors are now on
par with those provided by physicians
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* Many professional counselors want to help those who
have served and sacrificed for their country in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and we have made inroads in being able to
serve the military and their families.
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* TRICARE is the health service plan for the military and
their families (it used to be called CHAMPUS)
- Counselors have been able to provide TRICARE
services for a long time, but for decades, we have
been denied independent practice status. We had to
get a physician to sign off on our counseling, even
when the physician had no clue about what
counseling was.
Those days are now over.
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- Thanks to the lobbying efforts of your national
organizations – I provided testimony along with both
CACREP and NBCC’s Executive Directors at a
critical hearing in Washington, DC - the National
Defense Authorization Act of 2011 directed the
United States Department of Defense to adopt
TRICARE regulations to allow counselors to
practice independently. The rules were enacted just
a few months ago.
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* Many counselors have wanted to serve veterans
through the VA, but we have been denied entry as a
profession. This changed 3 years ago when Congress
mandated that the VA create a job description for
professional counselors. This job description has now
been implemented. We can finally provide counseling to
veterans in VA hospitals and outpatient clinics. In
addition, this new job description allows us to be
supervisors in charge of hiring, which will lead to
increasing numbers of counselors working for the VA.
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As the icing on the cake for those who would like to serve
the military population, the Army has now approved
professional counselors as eligible practitioners in the
Army Substance Abuse Program.
So if you ever wondered whether the lobbying efforts of
professional counseling organizations make a difference,
the answer is a resounding yes.
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* Many counselors are also interested in disaster relief
efforts – helping those affected by hurricanes, floods,
earthquakes, fires, and terrorist attacks.
- Professional counseling has been accepted as a
core member of the American Red Cross mental
health partners. As a result, counselors trained in
disaster mental health are now deployed in large
numbers to disasters.
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- In the spring of 2011, ACA deployed over 500
volunteer counselors to floods and tornadoes in 25
states, including the killer tornado in Joplin MO.
- More counselors were deployed to the Gulf Coast
region after Hurricane Katrina than any other mental
health profession – more than psychologists,
psychiatrists, social workers, or marriage and family
therapists
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* We have effectively dealt with threats to our ability to
use tests, inventories and assessment instruments
- Indiana 237 tests that psychologists wanted to
claim for their own, including DAT, EDI, MMPI
- Could this happen in Pennsylvania? Sure, and
ACA and PCA will be there to help if it does.
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* We are not just reacting to threats to our profession.
Since 2005, we have been proactively planning where we
want the counseling profession to be over the next
decade or two.
- [Describe 20/20] – the United Nations of
professional counseling in the united States.
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* Through 20/20, we finally agreed that we are one
profession. 30 organizations that make up the counseling
profession signed the historic 20/20 statement of
principles which states that we are all part of a unified
profession – and that profession is counseling.
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* Through 20/20, and promulgated 2 years ago, we now
have a consensus definition of counseling. So instead of
the dozens of definitions of what we do that you see in
textbooks, we are now united under the following
definition: “Counseling is a professional relationship that
empowers diverse individuals, families, and groups to
accomplish mental health, wellness, education, and
career goals.” 29 national professional counseling
organizations have endorsed this definition - including
the ACA North Atlantic Region - the ACA region that
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represents PCA - so it is now the standard definition for
all of us to use.
I have printed out the consensus definition for you and
you should have it at your table. We have promoted it
and are seeing it appear in textbooks, licensing board
websites, promotional materials, syllabi, business cards,
informed consent documents and elsewhere. In fact, I
received a phone call just this week from the Arizona
counselor licensing board to discuss how they could
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incorporate the consensus definition of counseling into
their regs.
I would like to ask you to do your part. Please use and
promote this definition with your clients, students, the
public and through your website, Facebook page and
other social media.
For those interested in learning more about 20/20: A
Vision for the Future of Counseling, please visit the ACA
website at counseling.org and click on the 20/20 icon.
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* We are not resting on our laurels. 20/20 is now actively
working on facilitating licensure reciprocity through the
Building Blocks to Portability Project. Through this
project, we are developing a consensus licensure title,
scope of practice, and education requirements that state
licensing boards can use to enable licensed counselors to
move from state to state.
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* We are advancing our ability to assist clients by
promulgating new competencies. Within the last few
years, we have the new social justice competencies
developed by Counselors for Social Justice, and the
competencies for counseling with transgender clients
developed by the Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
and Transgender Issues in Counseling.
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* The list goes on and on about the growth of our
profession. And if we have done all of this in the last 5
years, think of what new advancements will occur in the
next 5 -10 years and beyond.
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We do, however, need to acknowledge that even with the
tremendous growth professional counseling has
experienced, there are challenges we need to overcome.
Despite the fact that the Occupational Outlook Handbook
predicts that jobs in many counseling specialties are
growing faster than average, we do need to acknowledge
that we are currently living through difficult economic
times and that many counselors are having difficulty
finding jobs. ACA is addressing this by devoting
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considerable resources to our Career Center so that
members can receive career consults and find job
postings. In addition to that, we have created a new ACA
Center for Counseling Practice, Policy, and Research
that will advocate for new jobs in integrated care and
other non-traditional settings.
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We also need to make sure that as we advance the
profession, we don’t leave counselors behind in the dust.
TRICARE is a good example. The new independent
practice regulations require a 60 credit CACREP
accredited degree. This is certainly something to aspire
to, but currently most counselors do not meet this
requirement. So ACA fought for generous grandparenting
and we are pleased that the Department of Defense was
responsive and is allowing a transition period between
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now and 2015 so that counselors without a 60 credit
CACREP degree can be grandparented.
So let me say this clearly: As our profession continues to
advance and go through transitions and transformations,
ACA is committed to doing everything in our power to not
leave members who have been out and practicing behind
in the dust.
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So it is now time to play “Stump the ACA Chief
Professional Officer” Feel free to ask questions about
what is going on in our profession. Or perhaps you have
an opinion about an issue that you would like me to take
back to ACA. Or you would like to speculate about future
transitions and transformations for the counseling
profession. The floor is now open!