Colleagues and constituants, 

I have seen more and more of this advocacy to CACREP as the gold standard and I strongly oppose this attempted monopoly. Such a push risks thousands of counselord to have their training and educated discredited. Even in the event of grandfathering, there is no guarentee that insurance companies or employers themselves will not discriminate against those that did not attend a CACREP-accredited unversity. Furthermore, it is detrimental to the mental health field in general as in the event that counselors must return to school, many may choose to return for social work instead - considering it is already nationally established and already reimbursed by Medicaid. This will leave less mental health counselors, whome continue to advocate to our representatives for Medicaid reimbursement. Furthermore it will endanger many effective graduate programs and overturn their staff as well as their cirriculum in favor of CACREP standards. For the aforementioned reasons, I argue that it would be unethical for any state to fully endorse CACREP to this degree. There is no reason to believe that CACREP-accredited programs spit out more competent or effective counselors and therefore illogical to force this push on thousands of trained, skilled and effective counselors. 

Warmly,