Like Arizona, New Jersey Allows Unlicensed Mental Health Workers to Treat Children
You wouldn't let your child go to an unlicensed barber or beautician - why would you allow a child to see an unlicensed counselor?
Last month, I wrote about school counselors in Massachusetts implementing a mental health treatment plan against the parents’ explicit instructions not to socially transition their gender dysphoric child. I also wrote about a major court win for parental rights in Wisconsin - where a judge applied common sense as well as “the science” to state the obvious: schools are not mental health experts.
Court rules against school district and superintendent who - under "guidelines" not formally adopted by the board - hid gender dysphoric minor child's social transitioning from parents - a violation of parents' rights to make medical decisions. This is why I continue to bat away on unregulated mental health workers in schools - finally, a court is calling strikes:
Schools are not mental health experts
Social transitioning has medical implications
School psychologist and superintendent can't make those decisions for minors
Now James O’Keefe has exposed yet another school mental health worker keeping secrets from parents - not about grades, college or career planning, but, of course, more social transitioning for gender dysphoric children. In a video of his investigation, O’Keefe shows emails of school officials planning to conceal the mental health treatment from parents. This one caught my eye:
So I looked up the New Jersey requirements to become a “school psychologist” - and, sure enough, like Arizona, the NJ Department of Education “certifies” school psychologists essentially on the basis of their college course selection, or membership in a voluntary organization with no regulatory power, the National Association of School Psychologists.
On an “emergency” basis, the state even allows a county superintendent to issue an interim, emergency credential.
To practice “independently,” however, you must be licensed by the NJ Department of Law and Safety, Division of Consumer Affairs, an actual regulatory body that mandates a professional licensing exam and adherence to legally enforceable standards of professional conduct.
Also like Arizona and just about any other state that I have reviewed, one of those legally enforceable standards of professional conduct includes parental consent to treat a minor, absent a court order otherwise:
Pause for a moment to consider the rather intimidating name of that regulatory agency: The “Department of Law and Safety, Division of Consumer Affairs.”
Now consider this brief history tour of Arizona mental health licensing:
In 1998, the regulation of behavioral health professionals in Arizona was wholly voluntary. In an effort to mandate licensing, the Board of Behavioral Health Examiners submitted a 124-page report to the legislature begging them to protect the public from unlicensed mental health providers, at one point saying “barbers and beauticians” must be licensed - but mental health services was “buyer beware” in Arizona.
The 1998 report specifically cited “schools” - as one part of the buyer beware environment where:
“[The well-being of a person receiving mental health services from an untrained, unqualified practitioner has a very real potential of resulting in long-lasting trauma to the person which may be extremely difficult to reverse.”
Voluntary associations (like the ASCA and NASP) were not enough, the report says, “[They] have proved lacking in their ability to protect the public. The risk to the consumer is unacceptable.”
The report continues:
“It is licensure - ‘authorization to carry on a health activity which would otherwise be unlawful in this state in the absence of the permission’ that would best meet the needs of protecting the public.”
And the very first case study cited by the report to prove their thesis that mandatory licensing better protects the public?
The “Case of Anna” - a mother whose child became suicidal after being sexuality exploited - and then abandoned - by a school counselor:
It wasn’t until 2003, however, when Arizona finally amended its laws to require mandatory licensing.
And yet, even now, the Board of Behavioral Health does not license school-based mental health workers.
The Board of Education “certifies” them for your children.
Why? I don’t know - yet. But I have some suspicions. Maybe you do, too.
But it’s time to finally stop this nonsense. As that Wisconsin judge recently wrote, “schools are not mental health experts.”
Let’s pass an “Anna’s Law” - and make all mental health providers subject to licensing and regulation because, right now, it is still truly BUYER BEWARE in schools. With your children. And you may not even know about it until it’s too late.
End.