In her 30 years as a social worker, Kimberly Harper has applied for professional licensure in four states. Oregon’s process was the most cumbersome.
Only the state requires you to submit photos and proof of your name change and take a law exam, Harper said.
When Harper moved to Oregon in the summer of 2023 to work at a university mental health facility, the license fee, which typically costs several hundred dollars, was waived, but she still had to wait nearly three months for her license to be approved.
“Oregon doesn’t recognize reciprocity at all,” Harper said. “The fact that I was licensed in another state didn’t matter. I had to go through the entire licensing process.”
Republican state Rep. Ed Diehl hoped to make it easier for mental health care professionals licensed outside of Oregon to join the state’s vacancy-filled behavioral health workforce this year. His proposal would either expedite temporary work approvals for licensed providers relocating to Oregon, or select Oregon into a national agreement that would honor qualifications from other states. Dew.
But those efforts failed in Salem this week after the licensing board expressed concerns.
“We’ve started the conversation,” Deal said, adding that he hopes the bill at least sends a clear message that the licensing board should improve customer service for aspiring Oregon providers. Stated. “Reform is needed here.”
Oregon agencies that provide behavioral health support are facing a staffing crisis. A new study requested by Gov. Tina Kotek last year says the state must “prioritize investments in its workforce” as it seeks to expand access to mental health care.
To obtain the highest level of certification in its workforce, it must be approved by one of Oregon’s various licensing boards.
Social work licensing boards, in particular, have recently come under intense scrutiny for long delays in approving applicants. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported last fall that the Social Services Commission was processing an avalanche of applications with just three licensing staff, leaving one out-of-state license applicant waiting five months for his application to be processed. It was reported that. Social workers, who are stuck in the lengthy approval process, have complained to lawmakers that they have been unable to call the board for help and their emails have gone unanswered.
At last week’s hearing on Deal’s bill, Ray Miller, the new executive director of the Social Work Committee, told lawmakers he heard “loudly” that the agency needed to improve. He said wait times for licenses have been reduced by 23% since November.
Deal’s proposal would help already licensed professionals avoid those wait times.
His first proposal, House Bill 4071, sponsored by lawmakers from both parties, would provide temporary relief to mental health and medical practitioners who have applied for licensure in Oregon and hold licenses in good standing from other states. He directed the Oregon Licensing Board to grant him a permanent work permit. I could have given it my all while processing the paperwork.
The licensing board waived the red flag. Nicole Krishnaswamy, director of the Oregon Medical Board, said the board won’t be able to catch predatory doctors until they grant them provisional licenses. And if the commission finds a problem, it can deny a person a license, but there is no way to revoke a temporary license, she said.
“The public trusts the nation to certify that its health care providers are safe, clinically competent, and ethical,” Krishnaswamy told lawmakers. Deal’s bill would threaten that, she says.
So Deal scrapped his original proposal. He rewrote the bill to require a special commission to investigate licensing issues and added a new proposal for Oregon to join a national compact that would allow mental health counselors and social workers to practice in multiple states. .
Advocates say the compact not only helps strengthen Oregon’s behavioral health workforce, but is especially important in increasing the number of providers of color and could help military spouses moving from state to state. He testified that he had sex.
Anjabeen Ashraf, a counselor who runs Revolution Counseling in the Portland metropolitan area, said there is a “glaring lack” of culturally specific care among providers of color in Oregon. He said it was making burnout worse. And the entire community is “suffering from unmet needs and unaddressed trauma,” she said.
Participation in the agreement will allow providers to more easily move around the state to meet the needs of their communities, she said.
“I cannot overstate the urgency of this bill,” she testified.
However, the compact proposal was never included in the bill. Council representatives told lawmakers there are legal and legal concerns with the agreement and they wanted more time to address them.
Rep. Rob Nosse, a Portland Democrat who chairs the House Behavioral Health Committee, also told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he feels the compact idea requires more effort.
The Nosse Committee sent the task force proposal to the Joint Committee on Ways and Means without approving the agreement or recommending that the committee pass the bill.
“The committee and Rep. Deal have shown tremendous leadership in trying to see what’s going on on the board and what challenges people are facing in the permitting process,” Nosse said before the vote. I am grateful for that.” “I feel like the spotlight…helped.”
Deal said the proposal would likely “die a tragic death” in the Budget Committee.
Harper, a university social worker, helped develop plans for a social worker agreement with the National Association of Social Workers. Other professions have multi-state compacts, but this one is new and allows the first seven states passed to get a seat at the table to decide what it will look like. Oregon State is missing out on an opportunity to have that impact, Harper said.
“The timetable for downsizing is long overdue,” Harper said. “For me, paying to get licensed in all the different states was a huge investment of time and money.”
Michelle Pliske, clinical supervisor at Firefly Institute, a counseling center in Hillsboro, said the clinic doesn’t want potential candidates who don’t want to go through Oregon’s licensing process, which took five to six months for recent hires. He said he lost.
Pliske said there aren’t many social workers in the state applying, and the Firefly Institute is looking for people with specializations in child mental health, which are harder to find. She said her counseling program currently has seven open positions, even as it tries to meet the “tremendous” needs of the community. Some clients drive more than two hours to care for abused or traumatized children.
Social work agreements can help hire new health care providers who can start seeing patients quickly, as well as give patients more flexibility in care, Pliske said. Currently, if a child receiving services moves out of state to stay with another parent for a visit or vacation, her clinic must discontinue treatment, but the agreement effectively She said she may be able to continue treatment.
“It’s frustrating that there’s not a lot of hope in this Congress,” Pliske said. “But maybe in the next long session we can move this forward in a way that is intentional and actually meets the needs of the community.”
Sami Edge covers higher education and politics for The Oregonian. She can be reached at the following address: sedge@oregonian.com or (503) 260-3430.
