Bills of Special Interest

By Rebecca Gonzales, Director of Government
Relations and Political Affairs

This year there were several bills that were of special interest to NASW for various reasons. On the first two bills, we actively sought amendments and personally lobbied members of the Legislature. The third measure will require follow-up work next year to correct unintended consequences resulting from the measure’s passage.

SB 570 (DeSaulnier) Advanced Alcohol and Drug Licensing Act
This bill would have set up a licensure process for drug and alcohol counselors. This bill was amended late in the process and did not include many safeguards that we felt were necessary. The author did take many of the suggested amendments, including a referral process for a co-occurring mental health disorder.

The last version of the bill allowed a specified group of practicing alcohol and drug counselors to be “grandfathered” into the license. In other words, they did not have to meet all the requirements for licensure if they met certain thresholds. This had the effect of allowing some practitioners without a master’s degree to obtain a license. We wanted to make sure that this license would match up to the rigorous standards provided by other licenses and remained opposed to the bill. This bill failed in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

AB 2198 (Levine) Mental Health Professional: Suicide Prevention Training
This bill required additional Continuing Education Units (CEUs) on suicide prevention for LCSWs who completed graduate study prior to 01/01/16. For those who begin graduate study on or after 01/01/16, the bill required coursework in suicide prevention.

We were opposed to this bill for several reasons. First, we believe that social workers are educated on suicide prevention as part of their education. Second, if a social worker wanted to learn more or to refresh their skills, a variety of courses is available to them. Many of these courses are offered at the NASW conference and CE Fairs.

Secondly, mandated CE is troublesome for several reasons. One, a professional should be given the authority to take the courses that best complement their practice or workplace. The Legislature has also added mandated CE courses over the years and we see similar bills introduced each year. There is danger in adding required courses in a piecemeal fashion. Courses should be added with an overall plan in mind.

In coalition with other groups, we helped to develop an alternate plan to create a statewide taskforce on suicide prevention to really explore the best way to comprehensively reduce suicides. We hope to see this approach introduced in a bill next year. The Governor vetoed AB 2198 so the new CE and coursework will not go into effect.

AB 1775 (Melendez) Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act: Sexual Abuse
This bill would expand the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act to add the words “downloading,” “streams” or “accesses through any electronic or digital media” to existing CANRA law, which already defines sexual exploitation as “any person who depicts a child in, or who knowingly develops, duplicates, prints, or exchanges, any film, photograph, video tape, negative, or slide in which a child is engaged in an act of obscene sexual conduct,” thus changing legal reporting methods.

This bill was signed by the Governor. It went through the process as an uncontroversial “consent” bill. The intent was to simply modernize the language in the CANRA law to recognize new technologies. Late amendments were added that expanded the definition to apply to simply viewing pornography. While viewing child pornography is certainly troublesome, it does not reach the level of someone who is actually producing and exchanging child pornography.

Therapists who work with these clients are very concerned that this irrevocably harms the therapist/client relationship. Therapists who are required to report clients who are viewing child pornography may be unable to treat them as the client/therapist relationship may be broken.

We will be working with other mental health professional advocacy groups on this issue in the coming months. A possible solution will be to craft language to give therapists discretion in reporting these cases.