Time to change social worker licensing in state?

IT’S commonly argued that excessive occupational licensing reduces worker opportunity. But in some instances, it may also indirectly harm some of the state’s most vulnerable people.

This point is raised in a policy prescription from The 1889 Institute, an Oklahoma City think tank that promotes limited government and free enterprise. The study, by Jessica Wiewel and Byron Schlomach, finds Oklahoma’s social worker licensure laws are mostly unnecessary and at times counterproductive.

Oklahoma’s Social Workers Licensing Act requires state licensing for five types of social workers: clinical social workers, master’s social workers, social workers, social workers with a specialty of administration, and social worker associates. Of these, the report points out, only clinical social workers have independent practices and practice counseling. That group is licensed in all 50 states, “likely because their scope of practice overlaps that of licensed psychologists.”

The 1889 report examines the licensing requirements for the other four groups, which include mandates that social workers renew licenses annually; pay application fees, yearly fees, and continuing education fees; undergo national criminal history record checks; and pay other fees.

Oklahoma’s regulations exceed the norm in many states.

“In California, one can practice social work in a supervised setting without a license,” the report notes. “Most states do not require bachelor-level social workers to be licensed, with few exceptions like Oklahoma and Massachusetts. Most Child Welfare Agencies require a bachelor’s degree at minimum, even in states that do not require a license for bachelor-level social workers, requisite training being what matters rather than a state license.”

Excessive regulation has created a shortage of workers, Wiewel and Schlomach argue.

“Oklahoma’s licensing law makes becoming a social worker and maintaining a license time consuming and expensive, leaving Oklahoma with a severe shortage of social workers, and forcing existing social workers to take on more clients than they can appropriately handle,” the pair write. “Workers for Oklahoma’s Child and Protective Services report being unable to effectively fulfill their duties due to excessive workloads. Thus, a law supposedly meant to protect social worker clients has left both clients and social workers more vulnerable.”

While licensure is supposedly needed to prevent harm to vulnerable people served by social workers, Wiewel and Schlomach note the threat of lawsuits and criminal prosecution deter such abuse even where no licensure requirement exists in other states. And they argue private certification would be a more efficient process for handling complaints than what occurs under Oklahoma’s licensure system.

Here, a state board receives complaints against licensees “in writing only through the mail or at their personal office, not electronically.” A lengthy hearing process follows for serious allegations, “one that can go on for months, before a social worker might lose his or her license.”

It makes no sense to maintain a regulatory regime far more burdensome than that used in other states, particularly if those regulations indirectly reduce citizens’ access to services in the process.