ACA staff and representatives of our sister organizations representing professional counselors and marriage and family therapists participated in a rare joint meeting with House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committee staff and Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) Assistant Secretary for Human Resources John Sepúlveda and several of his staff members from the agency. The meeting focused solely on implementation of the counselor and marriage and family therapist recognition provisions of Public Law 109-461, the 2006 law to add our professions as mental health specialists within the VA health care system. To date, the VA has made only minimal progress in implementing the law.
During the September 24th meeting House and Senate committee staff expressed strong concern regarding the slow pace of implementation, and pressed Sepúlveda and his colleagues to speed up their work. Sepúlveda stated that implementation of the counselor/MFT recognition law is now firmly on his radar screen, and expressed his intention to implement the law in one year’s time. The meeting resulted in agreement among all parties that the VA would establish new job descriptions for each of the two professions, instead of a single joint description, and that the VA will work with our organizations and the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on the development of an occupational series for each of the professions.
The meeting is a strong, although only initial, step forward in gaining full recognition of counselors within the VA health care system. We are continuing to work with both the VA and Congressional offices to foster progress.
For more information, contact Scott Barstow with ACA at sbarstow@counseling.org, or by phone at 800-347-6647 x234.