While the underlying goal of creating a path that facilitates portability for licensed professional counselors moving to Virginia is admirable, the NCLEP does the opposite. It creates a restrictive precident for the field of counseling in VA, and perhaps other states, that also could overburden the country's mental health system by limiting the number of providers who can transfer between states. 

Informed and thoughtful legislators should take note that the American Counseling Association (ACA) , the worlds largest association exclusively representing professional counselors, declined to endorse the NCLEP. 

The ACA developed their own portability plan that avoids the dangerous ptifalls associated with the proposed NCLEP portability plan. This includes removal of the CACREP education standard. Many seasoned professional counselors obtained their masters in counseling degrees long before CACREP accrediation was available, or from institutions that had legitimate reasons for not pursuing a CACREP endorsement. Adopting the NCLEP standard would prevent these licensed professional counselors from moving to Virginia, with their years of valuable clinical experience, which would undermine the goals of portability and increasing license mental health providers.