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LEGISLATION AND ADVOCACY -
VIRGINIA
Chris Spanos
Virginia’s legislators convened on Wednesday, January 11, 2006, so that Governor
Warner could present a state budget for the next biennium and deliver his final
State of the Commonwealth address. The Governor then left office at noon on
Saturday, January 14, and the General Assembly session began with a
newly-elected Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General, along with a
100 member House of Delegates. (The forty-member Virginia state Senate will
stand for election in 2007.)
2006 proposal would affect social work practice
This year’s Assembly has before it a proposal to require public social workers
to be licensed by the Commonwealth. The proposal provides that, effective July
1, 2009, no person may use the title "social worker" or be designated as a
"social worker" unless he holds a license issued by the Board of Social Work. In
addition, the bill increases the membership of the Board of Social Work from
seven to nine members, authorizes the Board to establish specialties within the
profession and to issue licenses accordingly to qualified persons, permits the
Board to issue licenses without examination to a person who has been
continuously employed as a social worker for at least 10 years, and directs the
Board to promulgate emergency regulations to conform its existing regulations to
the new law.
Your legislative committee representatives for Virginia, Alice Kassabian and
Dolores Paulson, have been participating in discussions with your lobbyist and
the legislative committee of the Virginia Society for Clinical Social Work
regarding pros and cons of this proposal, and planning lobbying strategies. They
will keep you updated via your listserve (gwscsw@yahoogroups.com)
on the status of the above and on other proposals relating to mental health and
clinical practice issues, as they emerge. The June news & views lobbyist report
will summarize the session.
Government and Public Affairs Counselor Christopher J. Spanos of the Spanos
Consulting Group is the Virginia legislative lobbyist for GWSCSW and the
Virginia Society for Clinical Social Work.
For GSCSW Legislative
Information contact:
GWSCSW
PO Box 3235
Oakton VA 22124
202-537-0007
Fax: 703-938-8389
email: gwscsw@gmail.com
Website http://www.gwscsw.org