On Being a Preferred CE Provider

My thoughts on the motives behind the almost official ce rules change proposal have been made fairly clear in previous posts. So, if we're going to have to live with their agenda, what can we do about it?

We're going to use their own poorly thought out rules in an effort to retain our practice autonomy and our conservative morals. That's what we're going to do.

We're All Preferred CE Providers!

Aside from believing that there is/was no real provable problem here to solve to begin with, and that their "profession improving" ce program is driven largely by money (they can deny it but look at the proposal and ask yourself who benefits the most and how, then get back to me), there are four highly offensive pieces to their poorly conceived efforts (explained in previous posts). Here's how we plan to deal with each of them.

1. The "Approved Provider List"

The A/P List has had a number of inclusion categories added to it as it ping-pongs back and forth between your Board and The BHEC Council. Now, the only people offering CE's that are NOT on the list are independent, non-supervisors, who cannot get approved by the associations, government entities, or hospital groups (or have no clue how to), or have no desire to be associated with them.

Solution: I can't announce the details on this one until the paperwork is done but I will say that the rules clearly state that an association related to the mental health industry automatically makes the A/P List. All that the Second-Class CE Providers are needing is a like-minded place to call home. Connect those dots and the details are coming soon.

2. Second-Class CE Providers

Your Boards and the various "key stakeholders" that sit on the Standards Committee have divided all ce providers into two arbitrary classes: their preferred providers and, "Other" (now why would they do that if there's no problem to fix?). Until the Board added supervisors to the A/P List I found myself in the Second-Class, "Other" category and that doesn't sit well with me. At all.

"Supervisors" is a recently added category to the A/P List, so just like that I'm no longer a Second-Class Provider, but that isn't enough for me. What about all the other quality ce providers who have made career choices not to be a supervisor and/or don't subscribe to the associations and/or the ideologies they're promoting? What they're telling us to our faces is that if you don't tow the line with their new program guidelines then you're ce content has less value. For no other reason than they say so.

Solution: We're putting together a qualifying program (see #1 above) and we're going to "bless" the ce programs of like-minded providers that find themselves in the "Other" bucket of Second Class CE Providers. Read that again and let it soak in.

The irony of the bad idea that is this ce rules proposal is that if almost everyone is on the A/P List, or can be with a qualifying member's simple blessing, why do we need an A/P List?

3. The 50% Rule

50% of your required hours will have to come from their arbitrary Approved Providers list.

Solution: The program we're putting together to bless Second-Class CE Providers will render this disgusting attempt at market manipulation, impotent.

4. Required Cultural Diversity

Cultural Diversity programming has become a way to inject ideas that can't stand on their own merits, into a required course in an effort to normalize them (see our previous post for our views on the hijacked Multicultural efforts). Now we're going to be required to take 3 hours of Cultural Diversity mind-control every two years. I'm not interested in sitting through 3 hours of woke-leftist ideology that changes its foundational tenets before I make it to the Exit door. No, thanks.

Solution: We'll be putting together our own "Cultural Diversity" CE Course with input from as many like-minded counselors as we can get. We may even offer that program for free (TBD) as an incentive to belong to our group mentioned in #1 above.

Summary

When you create rules or programs with an open and honest heart in an attempt to address real, quantifiable problems, and do it in a transparent environment, you end up with a solid solution that the majority can get behind.

Push a revenue-driven, special interest agenda with little regard for what your licensees think and you end up with mounting problems that will not go away.

And you get pushback. A lot of pushback.

Plan Smart. Be Safe. Serve Others.

Kathleen Mills, LPC-S, CEAP