07/07/2016

President's Message

Greetings from the Pennsylvania Counseling Association!  PCA would like to offer our sincerest thanks to you for all of the work that you do and the contributions you make to the state of Pennsylvania as a counselor. We’re happy you’re one of us and we are grateful for your membership!

The purpose of this message – which is being sent to all members – is to spread the word about advocacy efforts for licensed professional counselors in PA and to request your continued support in helping us advance this initiative.

The big news for LPCs in the state is our recent contract with a law firm to retain representation in Harrisburg.  In short, we needed this badly.  Psychologists, social workers, and marriage and family therapists have all had lobbyists for years, and LPCs cannot stay away from this trend any longer.

At present, we have monitoring services, but not enough in our budget for formal lobbying.  What a lobbyist will do for the profession of counseling in PA is tremendous to say the least.  They can:

• keep us informed of legislative changes that impact licensure laws, job opportunities, and rates of pay
• help us to push legislation to ensure counselors have jobs in the years to come
• Help us to develop a practice act – “counselor” could become a protected term the same as “psychologist” and “marriage and family therapist.”

To make this happen, we need more members!  Professional lobbying isn’t cheap, but LPCs need to remain standing in the years to come.  PCA has made some impressive strides in this area, but we keep going back to the one basic fact: we need more dues paying members to fund this.

What we’re asking from you is simple: stay active in PCA, and spread the work that advocacy efforts and professional lobbying are necessary.  Our current goal is both to raise awareness of PCA’s ongoing efforts and to increase our ranks.  Rejoin if your membership is about to expire.  Talk to your colleagues about this initiative, particularly those that identify as professional counselors, and urge them to join or rejoin as well.  Tell people about PCA.  Post the PCA website on every social media platform available, and get the word out that counselors need representation!

Hope all is well,

Charles Jacob, Ph.D.

PCA President

Visit and join: http://www.pacounseling.org