T In his past year, the President of the American Counseling Association, Heather Trepal, hired a task force to deal with professional advocacy. This article is part of our answer to this charge.
In this article we discuss professional advocacy and its importance; Opportunities for which advisors can work; how ACA worked for the job; What can all advisory associations do to support an advocacy agenda? What can individual consultants do to become lawyers? and the important role that a clear, unified advisor identity plays in promoting a professional advocacy agenda.
Professional advocacy and its importance
The advocacy for professional advisers includes measures to promote the profession, with the emphasis on removing or minimizing obstacles to the ability of advisors to provide services. Although advocacy has generally gained in importance over the past two decades, efforts to advocate for professional advocacy have received less attention and have made little progress compared to advocates for customer and social issues.
Consulting is a mission-based profession, which means that we all had a reason to choose this career. There was someone we wanted to serve, or an environment or customer population for which we wanted to make a difference. All consultants felt called to be actors in change. In fact, our codes of ethics and expertise require us to stand up for and alongside our customers.
However, when we think about advocacy, we don't often think about our mission for our profession. Concerns such as parity (which is reimbursed in the same rate as other psychiatric professionals with comparable qualifications), public recognition, accurate representation of our profession, and job opportunities are important if we want to do our craft. We need to know and promote our value and recognize that we cannot help others if we are not strong and healthy as a profession. Professional lawyers must therefore be a top priority for all consultants.
Examples of professional advocacy
Advocacy activities serve to broaden the presence of counselors at local, state, and national levels, and counselors should not underestimate the importance of supporting the growth of the profession through action in their local communities. In addition, professional advocacy activities include those that aim to promote the consulting profession positively.
Larger advocacy actions could be conceived as capital-A advocacy actions, while smaller advocacy efforts could be referred to as lower case A advocacy actions. For example, A advocacy actions could involve large, organized efforts, such as: For example, those that aim to change federal or state legislation or local policies and practices. They can include teaching and monitoring students by setting standards, developing skills, and applying ethics. They are our shared responsibility to unite our voices.
Examples of "a" activity actions are those continuous, current efforts that positively promote the consulting profession. These efforts can bring about positive cultural change in terms of counseling, seeking help, or what it means to be a counselor. These efforts can also include serving our next generation of professionals.
An important point is that neither "A" nor "A" advocacy actions are more or less important. Both types are needed and we all have our part to play in the professional legal profession.
Today, counselors face innumerable barriers to serving students, customers, and communities. These obstacles include the Medicare supply gap, the lack of portability of licenses, the inadequate funding of mental health care in various institutions, the inadequate funding of school counselors, and the lack of public knowledge of career counseling. In addition, professional advisors often have difficulty repaying student loans years after graduation due to the increasing cost of training college graduates in all areas.
Each of the above obstacles makes it difficult for counselors to care for the people and communities who need them most. For example, if an older adult whose primary insurance is Medicare cannot access the services of a licensed professional advisor, their ability to receive services will be limited. If a counselor crosses state borders and is unable to work in his new community, it is unjust for both the counselor and the community, particularly because there is a nationwide lack of counselors. Inadequate funding of advisory services means that advisors are not adequately compensated and that clients do not have access to services that are essential to their well-being. Inadequate student-to-school advisor relationships harm both students and school advisors. In each example, counselors, clients, and communities are negatively impacted by socio-political barriers that prevent counselors from doing their job .
What ACA does to work for the profession
As an organization devoted to the consulting profession, advocacy is the focus of its mission at ACA. ACA staff, leaders, task forces and committee members work to raise awareness of the profession and support laws that help counselors serve countless communities. By advocating for recognition, compensation and resources, ACA helps advisors continue to do integral work.
According to its strategic plan and framework for 2018-2021, ACA's lobbying on behalf of the profession includes both legislative and non-legislative means. For example, ACA continues to advocate seamless state portability for independently licensed advisors. To support advisors, ACA recently funded an initiative to pursue an intergovernmental pact on portability. The Pact Advisory Board brings together lawmakers, approval committee members, advisors and others to work on the portability of licenses.
ACA also employs a team of government and political officials who work with federal, state, and local governments to support the profession at a legislative level. The efforts of these employees, along with those of other advisory organizations and individuals, have helped consultants to provide services through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). ACA remains committed to increasing employment opportunities for licensed professional mental health counselors within the VA. ACA also uses an electronic law enforcement alert system that all advisors should register to receive. If you click on a link, you can quickly get involved in the profession.
As a member of its advocacy group, ACA has formed several member-led groups to identify the needs of advisors, to raise awareness of what advisors are doing and how they affect communities, and to create employment opportunities for new professionals and continuing professional development and providing information to help consultants work for the profession and meet customer needs. By leveraging the passion, vision and energy of its members, ACA invests in the training of advisors to work for the profession, educate the public and promote the needs of advisors and those they serve.
ACA is also working hard to raise awareness of the importance of good mental health. A key example is the role of ACA in developing counseling awareness month activities. Last April, the topic of Counseling Awareness Month encouraged consultants to #BurnBrightNotOut. ACA introduced a Advisory Awareness Month Toolkit that includes social media resources, fact sheets, competitions, and sample proclamations that members can use to encourage executives and governing bodies to recognize consultants and the profession. In addition, ACA promoted Teal Day on April 10th. This was a day when consultants wore the symbolic color of Teal to promote the profession. According to the toolkit, "ACA has launched Teal Day as an outward symbol of advocacy and hope for consultants and the profession: an enthusiastic social initiative that aims to strongly support, recognize and honor professional consultants."
Proposals for the profession
Through efforts for leadership and advocacy, we have made great strides as a profession in order to establish ourselves as vital to the mental health landscape. United, our lobbying efforts have impacted on critical issues such as insurance reimbursement parity, licensing across states, and consumer awareness of advice and its value. All of these efforts are critical to our profession and ultimately have a positive impact on the wellbeing of our customers and communities.
Nevertheless, our profession is still exposed to threats, so we can never take these successes for granted. Instead, we have to redouble our efforts to strengthen the health and well-being of the profession in the future. There are numerous growth opportunities around professional advocacy initiatives.
One way to further develop our advocacy efforts is to institutionalize advocacy support and structures within advisory organizations. This could include setting up and maintaining an ACA committee with multi-organizational representation that focuses solely on advocacy for the profession. ACA, Chi Sigma Iota (CSI), the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC), state branches, ACA departments and other advisory organizations could also set up an advocacy mentoring program in their structures. In this way, those who have successfully advocated advocacy – whether legislative, organizational, or community advocacy – could share and share their experiences, so that a larger number of advisors would be well prepared to advocate for advocacy.
Advisory associations could also compile a list of local "advocacy leaders" as a resource for those facing the challenges and needs of advocacy at their workplaces or in their communities. Support from a colleague is sometimes all that is required to encourage a counselor to engage professionally and to help them find their way through such efforts. Spaces can be created within and between advisory organizations, in which advisors can discuss, make contacts, advise and receive support in relation to advocacy needs.
Cooperation between or within consulting organizations can also offer opportunities to expand existing lobbying. For example, CSI is currently posting “Heroes and Heroines” interviews on its website, highlighting the life work of highly established consultants with extensive legal experience. Three times a year, CSI also publishes advocacy agent interviews in its online newsletter "Exemplar" with members who are currently involved in advocacy efforts. In cooperation, ACA and CSI could make this lobbying accessible to an even larger number of people through a collaborative, interest-based newsletter. Together, the organizations could also expand the audience of such efforts through social media, where they could also share key advocacy issues, needs and actions.
In addition, during the open comment period, ACA and CSI members were able to review revised CACREP standards and provide feedback to ensure that the standards reflect the current and evolving requirements for professional leadership and advocacy in practice.
Finally, ACA can improve collaboration between ACA departments and branches by setting up scheduled briefings where department heads share the challenges and achievements of advocacy and gather support. One recent example is ACA's government affairs and public policy efforts to hold a monthly advocacy power hour with heads of state.
Consultants should also work for interprofessional interests. By identifying community partners and potential employees, we become stronger and can work more efficiently towards achieving our professional goals.
We are aware that many consultants have difficulty understanding how to act effectively for them. They want to help but don't know where to start. Another way in which the profession can promote the legal profession is to train, both in terms of direct legal practice and in terms of the leadership skills required for the legal profession.
CACREP requires advisory programs to address leadership development. However, training on the topic of leadership is often not visible in master-level curricula and is not particularly pronounced in doctoral curricula. Deliberate efforts to improve this education are vital.
This leadership and legal training can be achieved in many ways. One way to ensure that advisors are well equipped for the legal profession is to make existing resources for leadership and legal practice easily accessible. The ACA conference provides an excellent opportunity to promote advocacy education through advocacy-based educational pathways. an advocacy booth offering resources, networking and support; a keynote speaker who focuses on advocacy (possibly with a legislator); Special sessions where legislators can share and demystify their experience of working with advisors; and special pre-conference sessions that offer advocacy training.
ACA can further strengthen advocacy training by creating and promoting videos with short instructions for advocacy. These videos could focus on inspiring stories about advocacy efforts, detailing how advocacy started and what has been achieved. Other videos could strengthen our collective professional identity by effectively communicating who we are as a profession and how we differ from other areas of mental health. This would help any counselor to maintain their pride in the profession.
In addition, professional associations and organizations could offer their respective members webinars on leadership and advocacy. You could also create toolkits for counselor educators to better educate managers and lawyers in master and PhD programs.
Advocacy education could also be funded through Counseling Today, the Journal of Counseling & Development, journals from the ACA department, and other specialist literature. These publications could provide a special space for presenting research and best practices in leadership and advocacy. Through collaborative, comprehensive, consistent and deliberate efforts, counselors can continue to be empowered and united to promote the profession, which in turn promotes the well-being and dignity of those in the communities in which we operate.
Suggestions for consultants
The legal profession of a professional consulting organization is only part of the puzzle. The consulting profession would never have developed without the work of individual advisors, and nowhere is this more evident than in relation to the legal profession. In general, what matters most to legislators is what their voters think. Indeed, individual advisors working in accordance with their legislators have eased most of the legislative changes that affect our practice.
Each of us has a story to tell about how the law either supports or hinders our work as consultants. Instead of accepting that we have to do our best in a broken system, we have to identify barriers that others perceive as immovable. Sometimes this means taking up the fight – a process that can feel strange and intimidating but it is important if we want to thrive.
A simple starting point for consultants is to analyze our social networks and relationship resources in our own backyards. Who are the brokers you may already know who can serve as cheerleaders for your cause? Take the time to make strategic contact and build relationships. Find reasons to contact a member of your education committee, your religious leaders, a state legislator, or your health administrator. Support efforts in your community that match your values, regardless of whether these efforts are directly related to your role as a consultant. For example, counselors can send emails or make calls to support a bill designed to increase the means to prevent human trafficking or increase resources to respond to crises in the community.
Become visible and make your presence known. These relationships can sometimes be critical in unexpected ways when you need to work for the consulting profession or for the students or clients you serve. If it matters and efficiency is important, these communication channels are already open. A consultant could turn to the one legislator who takes care of the matter and becomes a political advocate, thereby influencing others to join the effort. This one legislator can determine whether a great idea will eventually become law. In total, individual relationships and networking count.
Unfortunately, upstream factors such as funding, bureaucracy and scarce resources can lead to social services and other constituencies competing with each other. It is often said that those who are not at the table cannot eat. Talking to your ACA office or division as an individual or ideally what you or your customers need and securing a place at the decision table can lead to changes that have a positive impact on the lives of individual customers.
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Indeed, such advocacy can also make your work much easier, more efficient, and more effective. Consultants should consider how different state or federal agencies support or question the work of professional advisers. Are there job descriptions and real opportunities for counselors to work in a variety of environments where other mental health disciplines are already accepted or adopted? Are there any lending programs that advisors need to involve? The need to integrate advisors into the VA system and Medicare reimbursement are examples of significant challenges. A natural response to these injustices and obstacles for people who have access to care is to get angry or frustrated. Individual counselors who associate themselves with this frustration can use it as an impulse to enter courageously unknown territory, including the legislative world.
The legal practice and the admission offices that enact these laws play an extremely important role in the landscape of our profession. It is helpful for consultants to build relationships with their license committee members. Sign up for their email notifications and take every opportunity to build relationships with them. Attend their meetings when they are public. Find an appointment to serve on the board. Let them know what you need and where advisors and consumers are having trouble. Then encourage others to do the same. Licensure Board members are officials charged with protecting the public, and many of the problems our profession is facing have a significant impact on consumers. School counselors can also connect with their members of the State Board of Education.
Professional advisors can help policymakers, members of their local communities, and members of their social networks understand the importance of advice and the value that we bring to our clients and communities. It is an important task to ensure that brokers in your respective areas and social circles understand the value of advisors. We know that counseling services help our clients and students feel supported, reduce their stress and anxiety and improve their daily functioning. It is important to transfer this knowledge to others.
Helping others understand the impact of our work and the wave effect that counselors have on their communities ultimately affects the profession in a number of ways. Raising awareness of the value of counseling can help reduce the stigma associated with mental illness and mental health problems. If others understand that one in four people has a mental illness and that our work as professional advisors helps to bring about positive changes, we can reduce the stigma in our communities more effectively. When mental illnesses are destigmatized, people who need advice and support are more likely to seek help to lead a more fulfilling life.
The importance of a strong consultant identity
A basic element of effective professional advocacy is a clear professional identity. If we do not know who we are, we cannot pass this message on to the stakeholders. ACA, CSI, NBCC, CACREP and other professional advisory organizations have helped lead consultants to a common professional identity. The development of the ACA Code of Ethics, the support of the CACREP standards for education and training and the acquisition of competences by the ACA departments are among the methods with which our profession defines and supports the identity of the advisors.
The lack of public knowledge about counseling as a profession is an additional obstacle to services and is inextricably linked to legal obstacles. Legislators may not have sufficient knowledge of professional advice to enact laws that create fair access between professions or for all clients. If managed care companies don't know what valuable care professional advisors can provide, we may be under-reimbursed. Even potential and current clients may not be aware of the unique professional identity of consultants and may misunderstand or underestimate our services. It is important that we inform the public, including lawmakers, about who we are and what we do.
We work in an increasingly interdisciplinary world. Therefore, consultants must work to increase public knowledge and awareness of the services, skills and training offered by professional consultants. As suggested by Stephanie Burns in a 2017 article in the Journal of Counselor Leadership and Advocacy, each advisor should give a one-minute “keynote speech” on professional identity that he can share with others. Such a speech can succinctly convey who we are and what we do to promote public understanding of our work.
Some practice settings require consultants to work with other mental health professionals under titles such as case worker or therapist. Similarly, customers can be referred to as consumers or patients depending on their attitudes. It is important for consultants to use the word "advice". If possible, counselors should refer to themselves as counselors, not therapists or counselors, and be clear about who they are as unique helping professionals.
We cannot expect to thrive in an interdisciplinary world if the public does not understand who we are. Educating the public about important issues related to mental health and well-being remains an essential role for advisers.
In summary, the consulting profession has come a long way, but we still have a lot to do. Counselors continue to encounter many obstacles to our ability to practice. All consultants and all of our professional associations and organizations are committed to advocacy efforts and to work towards expanding our profession.
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Members of the ACA Advocacy Task Force who contributed to the development of this article were (in alphabetical order) Angie Cartwright, Madelyn Duffey, Louisa Foss, Cheryl Fulton, Denise Hooks, Victoria Kress, Christine McAllister and Jordan Westcott. Direct questions or comments about this article to the Chair of Task Force Victoria Kress at [email protected].
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It should not be assumed that opinions and statements in articles that appear on CT Online reflect the opinions of the publishers or guidelines of the American Counseling Association.
