As a counselor educator who understands the rigorousness and extensiveness of supervision provided to counseling interns as part of their master's degree programs, I support this petition.  As mandated by our accrediting body (CACREP, and previously CORE), counseling interns receive both weekly individual supervision and group supervision, provided by both faculty members and on-site clinical supervisors.  Students in such accredited programs are monitored for professional competencies.  Those who do not demonstrate those competencies engage in remediation/development plans, designed to improve the necessary competencies.  If those remediation/development plans are not successful, the students are not allowed to progress through the internship process, and will be removed from the program.  This gatekeeping function ensures that students who complete an internship and graduate from an accredited program demonstrate the required competencies, and have satisfactorily completed extensively supervised internship experiences.  Those supervised experiences should count toward the supervised experience requirement for the Licensed Professional Counselor credential in Virginia.  

This slight reduction in the number of additional supervised counseling hours would have a very positive benefit for people in the Commonwealth of Virginia, because it would reduce a barrier to providing more qualified counseling practitioners into the workforce at a time when they are desperately needed.  The sooner we can increase the number of appropriately qualified LPCs to address the needs of Virginians, the better.