As a licensee and member of SHAV and ASHA who has been in practice for over fifteen years as both an SLP and a Nursing Home Administrator I am writing in strong support of the petition to remove the Clinical Fellowship Year requirement for licensure for Speech-Language Pathologists in Virginia and in so doing provide them with the same full and unrestricted licensure status which is immediately accorded to new graduate colleagues in the fields of Occupational and Physical Therapy. The current requirement for the clinical fellowship year unnecessarily restricts new graduates who have successfully completed their graduate level studies, earned at minimum the required 400 clinical clock hours to obtain their competencies, and have successfully passed the PRAXIS examination. The CFY requirement further reduces their earning potential as well as their ability to secure employment if a supervisor is not available. 

Additionally, I have had the pleasure of being a graduate clinician externship supervisor and a CFY supervisor and have been consistently impressed at the degree of knowledge, critical thinking skills, experience and integrity which the students have acquired during their program of study.  I believe that there remains an opportunity for seasoned SLPs to mentor newly licensed SLPs, but the Clinical Fellowship requirement itself has been shown to be unnecessarily limiting and should be removed. For those reasons I fully support this petition.

Respectfully,

Janet C. Bunnell, MS CCC/SLP, LNHA