Commenter:
Sarah J. McElhaney, M.S., Resident in Marriage & Family Therapy
Support for Petition
As a resident that has been through the process of registering supervision to apply towards licensure in Marriage & Family Therapy, I support this petition whole-heartedly. I recognize and appreciate the Board’s role and their dedication to protect the public community at-large. By establishing and implementing a rigorous credentialing review process of applicants, a respectable standard to our field is recognized and promoted. While understanding and holding all of this, much as being a member of the public community, I have been privy to the experience of what it’s like on the receiving end of this process as an applicant. In short, the lack of clarity, organization, and responsiveness that I experienced in my interactions with the Board as an applicant seems to highlight the supervision registering process is not functioning as well as it could or should. These amenable proposed solutions (found in this petition) maintain the Board’s upmost commitments to the public community, while also providing the proper responsiveness, attentiveness, and understanding deserved by the applicants who are diligently, and in good-faith, going through this process. I think a “lose-lose” situation for both the Virginia public community and our mental-health serving community would be for well-trained, qualified clinicians to lose confidence in the Virginia licensing and credentialing process and go to other locals to practice. I have hope that our community of MFTs can work together with the Board to address concerns and implement changes to benefit all parties. Therefore, I support this petition for the aforementioned reasons.
