Embark on a journey to demystify the latest CE requirements for Texas LPCs with me, Dr. Kate Walker, as your guide. I promise, by the end of our discussion, you'll have a confident grasp on the 2024 changes, including the notorious "50% rule." This isn't just another rundown of regulations; it's an in-depth exploration designed to arm you with the strategies you need to effortlessly align your continuing education with the new professional standards. Whether you're concerned about navigating the updated September LPC rules or identifying the right providers, I've got you covered.
Brace yourself for a wealth of practical advice on how the "50% rule" will affect your license renewal and how to steer clear of common pitfalls that could disrupt your professional development. There's no need to tackle the approval criteria for providers alone; join the conversation in our Facebook group to exchange insights and get those burning questions answered. With upcoming January trainings and my guidance throughout this episode of Step it Up Training, you're set to face these changes with confidence and your license renewal process with ease.
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
Embark on a journey to demystify the latest CE requirements for Texas LPCs with me, Dr. Kate Walker, as your guide. I promise, by the end of our discussion, you'll have a confident grasp on the 2024 changes, including the notorious "50% rule." This isn't just another rundown of regulations; it's an in-depth exploration designed to arm you with the strategies you need to effortlessly align your continuing education with the new professional standards. Whether you're concerned about navigating the updated September LPC rules or identifying the right providers, I've got you covered.
Brace yourself for a wealth of practical advice on how the "50% rule" will affect your license renewal and how to steer clear of common pitfalls that could disrupt your professional development. There's no need to tackle the approval criteria for providers alone; join the conversation in our Facebook group to exchange insights and get those burning questions answered. With upcoming January trainings and my guidance throughout this episode of Step it Up Training, you're set to face these changes with confidence and your license renewal process with ease.
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
Happy New Year everyone. Welcome to 2024, and that means so much for us regarding CEs, but it's not as hard as you think. I'm Dr Kate Walker. Welcome to our first training of the new year and let's get to work. But I have to make sure that I'm live, so let me double check. There we go, excellent, all right. So remember, as a step it up member, you can join me live without Facebook. You just go to your Kate Walker training profile and the zoom link is there and that way you can ask me questions in real time. If you are not on Facebook, it's hard to tag me afterwards. Right, I mean, you have to be in the Facebook group, but you don't have to have the Facebook group just to be in the step it up membership. You can have all the perks of the step it up membership without Facebook. It's just if you have questions after the fact and you want to tag me or you want to tag my assistant, jennifer and you know, ask questions about the this training here. It's easiest to do it, of course, in the Facebook group, but hey, we'll figure out a way. So again, my name is Dr Kate Walker and I'm going to talk about the 2024 changes that are live regarding CEs. Spoiler alert it's not as hard as you think it is. I'm going to make it very clear you're going to have a clear understanding by the end and hopefully know exactly what to do with all of your CEs that you need to have every renewal cycle. And don't forget if you're watching this on a replay or listening to this on the podcast first of all, go you, go you, because you're taking time out of your day to get smarter and doing. I've heard it's a new term now. It's called micro learning. So you're doing your micro learning for 2024. That's awesome. I will be doing some screen shares, but you know me, I'm going to talk you through every single thing that I show, so don't feel left out if you're watching me live or you're watching me on a replay. Hopefully this will clear up any confusion you might have about the new criteria for Texas LPC CEs as the new rules stand. All right, so first things, first glasses, because I have to be able to see, so this is not hard to remember. We are, in fact, these rules for LMFT. They went into effect in 2023. So I believe it was March 2023. The new CE rules went into effect for LMFT and they actually we had a lot of new rules roll out and when they went into effect for LPC as well in 2023. But the 50% rule that's the specific rule I'm going to be talking about today that actually did not go into effect until yesterday. So January 1st 2024 is when LPCs need to start thinking about that ratio, the number of CEs they have from a designated provider type. So I will talk about that.
Speaker 1:So I had a question last week. I just want to jump to real quick. It was a great question. Somebody asked me okay, so are they going to grandfather you in? Well, this isn't really grandfatherable because, like, let's say, you renew in March this year so March 31st 2024, and you get picked for an audit. Well, staff is going to look at your renewal and they're going to start looking at your ratio right away. They're not going to say, oh well, this person finished all of their CEs in December, so they really didn't need anymore. So right, they're going to look and say, oh no, this is a 2024 person, let's see if they have 50% of their CEs from this type of provider.
Speaker 1:So I want you to think in terms of what would you say or how would you respond if you were audited in gosh January 31st this year? What if you were a January renewer, right, and you're like, oh my gosh, I don't have 50%? Well, imagine if you were audited, right. How would you respond to that? So I want to dig into more about what is a designated provider and also another great question I want to get to really quickly is how do you know right and I want to talk about that more and there are a couple of ways. I mean, I hold two licenses. I'm going to tell you how I look for the right courses to count for the 50% and I hope that helps you guys too.
Speaker 1:But, as any new rule, anything that has just gone into effect, we have to remember staff Staff has a warming up period as well. Right, the staff at the LPC and BHEK and LMFT. They have been trained on what to do and what to ask and what to look for. But remember they're learning too, because there aren't, there's no grand list of these designated providers, and you'll see why in just a second. So I'm going to double check over here on Facebook. I don't see anybody asking questions. All right, I think we're good to go, and it doesn't look like anybody's waiting in the waiting room, so that's good to go as well. So let me go ahead and jump to the screen share. I want to take you to All right, so what I'm showing everybody right now is something super boring.
Speaker 1:It is my file folder with the rules in it and I want you to see. I've got some things in here, but the November 2023 rules for LPC and the November 2023 rules for MFT are the latest rules that we have. But I want to show you something. I do keep all the old rules and if we look, we'll see we had rule changes in no, I'm sorry September for MFT and LPC. We had rule updates in June of 2023 for LPC and LMFT, and we had rule updates in March for LMFT and LPC.
Speaker 1:So I want you to know, as a member of the Step it Up group, I'm always going to make sure you know when these rule updates happen. I'm going to make sure that you know exactly what changed. I mean, sometimes it's like silly stuff, like okay, we went through and checked all the grammar or we made sure that we weren't duplicating rules in certain places, though sometimes they'll just go in and do a bunch of cleanup. I know what the last rules update. They went in through and kind of sliced and diced the ethics portion of the LPC code and then they moved them into certain things into their own section. So it just made it easier on the eyes, it made it easier to read, but nothing really new happened.
Speaker 1:But when I pull up, let's pull up the September LPC rules and it would help if I had them on screen that I'm trying to share. So let me just double check. Yep, okay, good, so you're looking at if you are watching, you're looking at a copy of the PDF for LPC and what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to. I love these. If you've watched me teach this before, you know I love the hot links because we just click on it and it takes us right to where we want to go, which is continuing education. There we go 681.140. And I'm not going to read this. So those of you listening read a huge sigh of relief, because that would be super boring.
Speaker 1:But I am going to draw your attention to some italics that a lot of people they don't really check it out, right, because these are things. They were adopted to be effective March 7, 2023. And those italics, they're really important, right? I always check that, especially when I'm redoing one of my courses. I want to make sure that I pay attention to those italics, because it'll tell you when these rules go into effect and I will tell you. I'm not finding what I want to find, so I will. I'm going to close, actually, I'm not going to close it. Cancel, boy. I start teaching soon and I need to really get my banter together when I'm looking for things. Right now I'm very low on my banter, so I'll blame it on the holidays. I'm not quite up to speed yet, so let me open the latest ones. And again, I'm going to go to those hotlinks and if I don't find what I'm looking for, that's fine. I'll definitely post it later.
Speaker 1:So we want to get to the requirements for continuing education. And here's the letter F. Again, we're back here, if you're listening. We're looking at 681.140. And we're looking at what I refer to as the 50% rule. This is letter F, and I know I'm scrolling past that, but I'm going to draw your attention to letter K. Letter K says subsection F of this rule is effective January 1, 2024. And it was probably there in the last rules. I looked up but I missed it, so let's review. I'm drawing your attention to the italics. Always look at the italics, because the italics will tell you when that rule is to go into effect.
Speaker 1:And the LPC board made doubly sure that we understood. Everything went into effect in 681.140 in March of 2023, march 7 of 2023, as a matter of fact, except the 50% rule. The 50% rule went into effect yesterday. So if you're going to renew from January 1 on, you have to ask yourself what would I tell the staff or the board if my CEs were audited? Could I prove that I met the 50% rule? So I thought that was very important. That's kind of number one, what I wanted to show you, because that question does come up. Well, you know what happens if I renew January 31st. Well, I don't know. You got to make that call, especially if you are getting audited.
Speaker 1:So let's look at letter F. Licenses must obtain at least 50% of their continuing education hours from one or more of the following providers. Now, there are words missing here Type a, provider, designated provider, approved provider, authorized provider, like. We have to look at what's missing in the rules almost as much as we have to look at what's there. So because those words are missing. We have to read between the lines a little bit.
Speaker 1:So what do we know? We know that the LPC board, lmft board, bhek, social Work, psychology everybody got out of the CE approving business a couple of years ago. Right, that had to do with sunset review, the four year rules review in the name of efficiency and stringlining and making sure we didn't have backlogs again. They looked and they were did a really good marketing decision. Right, they looked and they said eh, you know what, this $50 check that people were writing us to be called approved providers didn't really protect anybody. It didn't mean we went and we started looking at these providers and saying, wow, this person's better than this person, or this person takes care of their records better than this person. So they got out of the CE approving I'm sorry, ce provider approving business and they said you know who does a really good job of, I don't know, taking care of their records, providing CEs, putting out wonderful, wonderful instruction? And I think they all probably sat down together and they said these types of providers so I'm gonna drop that word right in your lap a type of provider.
Speaker 1:All right, so this is not an approved provider, this is a type of provider, and the metaphor I use is hey, when I go grocery shopping, I can buy regular oranges, or I can buy another type of orange, I can buy an organic orange, right, what do I know about an organic orange? Well, supposedly it comes from this better thing and it's grown in this better way and this kind of a better soil without this right, so without knowing anything about oranges, the word organic helps me look at the quality in a different way. It's a different type of orange. Okay, so that's what we're looking at here. We're looking at a different type of provider, not an approved provider, but a type of provider. So we look at the types of providers listed and it's in the rules, so we pay attention when it's not in the rules. We develop best practices and we go to groups like this or we attend consultation groups with our colleagues.
Speaker 1:So number one type an international, national, regional, state or local association of medical, mental or behavioral health professionals. Two public school districts, charter schools or education service centers. Three city, county, state or federal government entities. Four an institution of higher education accredited by a regional accrediting organization recognized by the council for higher education accreditation, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board or the United States Department of Education. Five a religious or charitable organization devoted to improving the mental or behavioral health of individuals. Six a licensee with supervisor status. Hello, that's me right. Anybody who is a supervisor. It doesn't even say LPC supervisor, right? So that's one of those great big loopholes.
Speaker 1:You can drive a truck through a hospital or hospital system, including any clinic, division or department within a hospital or hospital system, or any provider approved or endorsed by one of these types of providers. So we're using that word type. These are types of providers, right, so provider is an orange, we're looking at the types of oranges. Right, so provider, we're looking at the types of providers. That's what BHEC, lpc and LMFT are telling us. We want you to get 50% of your CEs from these types of providers. Now here's where I think kind of the big problem is. We don't know that. That's providers. We don't know. Oh my gosh, texas said we were approved. Oh, I better not use that word. We were the type of provider that meets the 50% rule. Well, companies like Pessie, or CEs for less, or all of those folks out there all over the country, they don't know necessarily whether they are this designated type or not, so they may not make the extra effort when you take their course to say, hey, joanne, yeah, we're going to meet that 50% designated rule that LPC and LMFT just put into effect in your state. So just want you to know that they may not do that. So it's back to us again, where there is no rule. We have to develop best practices. So what are some best practices you can start to develop so that you know your CEs are coming from the type of provider that will fall under this 50% rule?
Speaker 1:Well, I always tell people look at the title, right, look at the title of the organization. Does the organization have the word international in it? National? Think about NCE, nbcc. Right, that has that in stands for national. So I have my NBCC certification. I'm an approved provider for online courses for NBCC. So even if I wasn't a supervisor, my online courses would meet this criteria if we are saying the word national makes me one of the 50% which I'm going to own. This. This is my opinion. I think it does right Because, again, we're looking at this as if we work for the LPC Board, we work for BHEC. Remember, they're learning as we go as well. Right, they're learning which and, believe me, by now they probably have a great big list of places that have the word national in it, right? Or international or regional or something like that. So a state you want to see if it has the state name in it. You want to see if it has, if it's a mental medical or behavioral health professional.
Speaker 1:So Texas Counseling Association, tamft, aca right, look for these national organizations. That's really the one that I've seen come up in conversation, right? How do we know if PESI is one of the providers that meet the 50% criteria? Well, I don't know, because I personally don't know what their acronym stands for. I don't know what PESI means. So that's something I think you could contact them, or any provider that you're going to go get a CE from and it sounds like super interesting and you really want to take it, it's going to really add to your practice and your livelihood, but you're just not convinced that it could meet the 50% rule, or I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think of it this way I'm going to go get whatever CE that I want, I'm going to make sure that they're wonderful, quality CEs, and then at the end, if I look and I see that the ratio is off, then I'll start looking for those organizations that provide what I need. But I'm going to start with quality first. I'm going to start with what's going to meet my needs as a provider. I mean, I'm the professional here, right, I know what I need. I know where I'm missing things in my own continuing education. So I'm going to start with that before I get to the space where I'm trying to meet the criteria for the 50% rule. Now that means and I want to speak to your heart just for a second you procrastinators out there, I love you so much. Right, I'm ADD. I've had to develop systems to make sure that I have these things in place.
Speaker 1:If you're going to wait to the last minute to get your CEs, this might become a bigger issue for you than it really really needs to be. So if you're going to make that New Year's resolution, I'm going to stop the share, and that resolution is maybe to plan ahead and get things done ahead of time. I mean we have two years, our renewal cycle is two years. Lpc to get 24-hour, six of which are supervisor CEs. Lmft 30 CE-hour, six of which are supervision CEs. So we have time. We have time to get those. You have wonderful conferences. Texas Counseling Association You've got the TAMFT, you've got ACA, you've got wonderful associations that are national, regional, all the things Right. And then you've got little Omi over here who can give you unlimited CEs that meet the criteria. So, really, I think, if you're just going to get right down to it, if you're planning ahead, you can get some amazing quality CEs, even if they don't meet the 50% rule. And then at the end, if you're needing to get 12 more CEs, look at those wonderful professional organizations out there.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm going to double check and see if we have any questions. I see we have some people watching. Any questions before I wrap it up? All right, so what I tried to cover today is that the italics and the LPC rule both give us a heads up about when these rules go into effect. So, even though the rules went into effect in March of 2023, the 50% rule started yesterday, and so anybody audited from here on out would need to have in mind what they would say if their CEs were audited.
Speaker 1:Right, we talked about the idea that these are not approved providers, right? Lpc, lmf, tb, hec nobody's in the approving business anymore. These are types of provider that meet the criteria for the 50%. And then the question I really can't answer, which is, definitively how do you know that this place meets the 50% rule? You're going to have to develop some best practices for yourself and look at the titles. Look at your certificate, right, because that's the proof that you're going to submit to staff if you're audited. Look at that certificate, Maybe even go back to the company that provided you the certificate and say, hey, can you just add here that you are a national provider or a regional provider, or you're a religious organization or one of these types of providers, so that it's very, very clear when I turn in my CEs that you meet that 50% rule. Thank you so much, and I'm sure they'd be happy to do that for you. So I will look for questions. Remember, all you have to do if you're in the Facebook group is tag me and I will be happy to answer those.
Speaker 1:We are back on deck after the holiday. We all took some time off here at Kate Walker training. I hope everybody had a wonderful holiday. We've got great trainings coming up in January, so plan ahead. Come on, join me, ask some questions. I'd love to hear from you. I'm Dr Kate Walker. This is the Step it Up Training. Have a wonderful day.