FEATURE ARTICLE
July 2004

Distance Counseling and the Portability of Licensure
by Norman Meshriy

One of the areas that needs to be at least part of the thinking and discussion of licensure efforts in California is that of distance career counseling. This is a growing area of expression of career counseling as career counselors receive training and distance counseling certification. There is a lot of history of counseling and therapy delivery through distance methods, but little law and legislature in an arena exposed to the universe.

The demand has been driven by many client issues and dynamics, and by the ease of use, and acceptance of technology as a delivery mechanism.

• Counselors just quite naturally use the telephone, the Internet, email and any other automated facility to make contact with their clients, pass information, and even offer counseling and consulting using remote facilities.
  
• Clients move away from the city, state, or county of their career counselor, but have subsequent needs and call upon their counselor by phone, email, or other distance methods.
  
• Clients who move to a different location will still recommend a counselor who worked well for them, without regard for location differences.
  
• Clients call upon a counselor requesting distance services because they cannot participate in in-person sessions due to physical difficulties, travel difficulties, or simply because they prefer to interact with a counselor using interactive syncronous or asyncronous facilities, a growing phenomenon.
  
• Often, distance methods provide a current-day, best cost/benefit method of delivery of services (i.e. for a college or university, career center, or other highly visible service organization).
  
  No matter the cause, there are many circumstances that are making distance counseling a reality. Companies like ReadyMinds (www.readyminds.com) are stepping up to the plate to help make this transition by articulating, training, and preparing counselors with the skills and best practices of distance counseling so that we can incorporate this new way of expressing our career counseling expertise with dignity and respect for our profession. The Center for Credentialing and Education, Inc. is the authorizing body that certifies distance counselors. ReadyMinds is the authorized training delivery organization that provides training to meet the competencies necessary to conduct distance counseling.
  
  ReadyMinds is a very high-quality organization, and I am proud to be a counselor in their program. I met (by phone) Randy Miller, Founder and CEO, and James Malone, Ph.D., Director of Career Counseling prior to deciding to head out to New York for my first training session. I was skeptical at first, but my conversations with Randy and Jim caused me to make a trip to New York to participate in one of their first training sessions. My intuition was correct and the product and people of this organization are truly first class.
  
  I have been a distance career counselor with ReadyMinds for almost two years. I worry about the lack of integrated interstate policy with regard to treatment of distance counseling. I would like to see more definition and policy in the US with regard to distance counseling. I see lack of state licensure in California and the few other states without licensure as impediments to establishment of the controls necessary to insure quality and some level of professional standards. I love the quality of approach of ReadyMinds in taking the lead in the "frontier" of distance counseling, this new expression of our counseling expertise, but something is missing. We are proceeding, naturally to do the best we can in an arena of "business demand," but the professional organizations overseeing theory, standards, and practices are in catch-up mode.