The undersigned organizations, who represent thousands of social workers in the Michigan behavioral health workforce and the behavioral health provider organizations that employ social workers, write in strong favor of the Social Work Licensure Modernization Act.

For years, Michigan behavioral health organizations and practice owners have experienced excessive wait periods for their clients and excessive caseloads due to staffing shortages and the increased demand for services since the beginning of the pandemic. According to the Community Mental Health Association, CMH organizations are experiencing 20-40% vacancies in social work positions. Some of these shortages are attributed to an inability for some of their staff and candidates for social work positions to complete the current social work licensure process. The barriers to the completion of the licensure process is not the lack of professional competency on the part of the clinician. Rather, the failure to complete the licensure process centers around the inability to acquire the required number of supervised hours within the required timeframe or the inability to pass the ASWB exam - a test without a clear link to professional competency. 

In the time of a national mental health crisis and unprecedented, deep, prolonged behavioral health workforce shortage, we must prioritize efforts to grow and empower our behavioral health workforce. 

Since Michigan passed social work licensing in 2005, there have been no substantial reviews of changes to the law. The Social Work Licensure Modernization Act aims to:

• Increase the number of licensed social workers in Michigan to help address workforce shortages

• Reduce unnecessary and/or problematic barriers for licensees

• Bring Michigan in line with other national license legislative changes

In 2021, Illinois passed and signed a law that similarly tweaked their licensure process. That change resulted in almost 3,000 new licensed social workers in the first six months of 2022, which was an increase over the 421 licensed social workers licensed in that same time period in 2021. Since that time, similar legislative movements have occurred in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Utah. The Social Work Licensure Modernization Act will help organizations, like ours, recruit and retain critical talent across the state while bringing, into the field, a great number of Michiganders with strong higher education backgrounds, proven social work practice competence, and a diversity of backgrounds.

The State of Michigan has remained diligent in ensuring that, through licensure and title protection, we protect both the Michigan public and social workers. We believe this should remain at the forefront of our discussions. We support this updated multi-tier licensing and look forward to your support on these legislative changes.

Sincerely,