News from North Carolina Substance Abuse Professional Practice Board
Jul 27th, 2008 • Category: NewsBig News from the Board
Earlier this month, the General Assembly of North Carolina enacted Senate Bill 2117, Amend Substance Abuse Professionals Act. Senate Bill 2117 was sponsored by Martin Nesbitt and Martha Alexander sponsored the House companion bill (H2746). The bill passed the General Assembly without a dissenting vote in either chamber.
This legislation promotes workforce development by streamlining the application process with the elimination of the oral examination and removal of the 2,000 hour post-master’s degree work experience requirement for Criteria B LCAS applicants. It also updates terminology in keeping with other licensing boards.
The most substantive change as a result of this recent legislation is the elimination of the oral examination from the credentialing process. The oral exam was the means by which a counselor’s competency was tested. As the International Certification and Reciprocity Consortium (IC&RC) updated its written examination for the CSAC and LCAS credential in June to include questions to test one’s competency and voted to eliminate the oral exam as an IC&RC requirement, this legislation also eliminates this component as a credentialing standard in North Carolina.
As a consequence, counselors who are scheduled to sit for the September oral exam will instead be registered to sit for the updated written exam in September. These applicants will not be required to pay any additional fees to sit for the September written exam. Correspondence will be mailed to these applicants within the next two weeks.
The September written exam will be administered at The McKimmon Center in Raleigh instead of The Quality Inn in Burlington, NC. All counselors who are scheduled for the September written exam will receive a notice regarding the new testing site.
Elimination of the oral examination will also impact the process by which Criteria C LCAS applicants obtain the license. One making application under this Criteria will now be required to sit for the written examination instead of the oral examination.
There are study guides available for both the updated CSAC and the LCAS written exams. The CSAC study guide can be purchased for $50 while the LCAS study guide costs $29. Please write the Board and request the study guide you desire along with a check or money order. The Board office will mail the study guide on the same day in which a request is received.
One will still be required to complete all credentialing standards (work experience and educational hours) before his/her certificate or license will be awarded and mailed to the counselor.
Another major change enacted by this legislation is the elimination of the required 2,000 hours of post-master’s degree work experience for a Criteria B LCAS applicant. Since these counselors have already completed over 6,000 hours of work experience in order to obtain the CSAC, this will streamline their LCAS application process.
There are other implications of the bill’s passage. Terminology has been updated from a “clinical addictions specialist intern” to a “provisional licensed clinical addictions specialist” in keeping with terminology used throughout other health and human services professions. A full article outlining the details of Senate Bill 2117 is forthcoming in the Board’s Summer 2008 newsletter.
This page was very helpful and will come to it more often . Will there be changing article for people to read on monthly bases ?
It’s hard to come by decent info on the web.
I really enjoyed this post, especially the “examples in this post” portion which made it really easy for me to SEE what you were talking about without even having to leave the article. Thanks