BBS committee advances phased plan to streamline licensure pathway, delays earlier clinical exam change

The Board of Behavioral Sciences Workforce Development Committee on an item about restructuring the pathway to licensure discussed a three‑phase plan that would make several near‑term changes now and postpone the more complex change of allowing clinical exams to be taken earlier until after other reforms and an exam transition are in place.

Roseanne Helms, legislative manager for the Board of Behavioral Sciences, said the discussion continued prior committee work and listed the possible reforms under consideration: allowing the California Law and Ethics (L&E) exam to be taken at the candidate’s discretion (while still requiring passage before clinical eligibility), setting a seven‑year age limit on qualifying L&E and clinical exam scores, extending registration/experience timeframes from six to seven years, and creating a one‑time two‑year hardship extension that could permit work in a private practice or professional corporation under specified conditions. “This discussion is a continuation of a discussion we've been having at previous meetings about several possible ways to streamline the licensing process in an effort to reduce barriers to licensure,” Helms said.

The committee recommended a phased rollout. Phase 1 would implement changes largely unrelated to major exam rework (for example, the L&E timing change, the 7‑year limits, the 7‑year registration/experience alignment, and a narrowly scoped hardship extension). Phase 2 would be the statutory and regulatory work to adopt the AMFTRB national exam as the LMFT clinical exam. Phase 3 — deferred for further study — would permit earlier clinical exam eligibility (staff described a sample threshold of roughly 875 supervised hours, or about half of the required 1,750, to allow earlier exam attempts) and would require more substantial licensing‑system and procedure changes to how experience hours are tracked and expire.

Steve Suttergreen, executive officer, described administrative challenges to moving the early‑exam change sooner: “it's more than just Breeze. It's the administratively, putting this in place would require, actually, the board to really pivot how it administratively reviews, like, the hours and such.” Staff and several committee members said implementing multiple large changes at once — including a possible exam vendor/format change — could create confusion for applicants and add heavy programming and staffing demands.

Committee members and stakeholders generally supported the goals and asked staff to provide clearer timelines and visual diagrams showing phases and estimated implementation steps. Dr. Walker (public board member) suggested a timeline diagram: “What are your thoughts about creating, like, a visual diagram that possibly includes a timeline that has the dates or the years?” Helms agreed to prepare a visual timeline and to return with additional detail at a later meeting.

Public commenters including Ben Caldwell (LMFT, California State University Northridge / High Pass Education) and Shanti Ejron (CAFT) urged prioritizing the early‑exam change because it would expand licensure equity and workforce capacity. Caldwell commented the national exam move improves portability but “allowing individuals to take the clinical exam earlier does do both of these things” — referring to equity and adding clinicians to the licensed workforce. Staff and several board members responded that work on the early‑exam change will continue in parallel where possible, but Phase 3 requires additional legal, regulatory and system design work before implementation.

No formal vote was taken on the licensing‑pathway proposal at this meeting; staff will refine the language, run it by legal and licensing units, produce a timeline/diagram and return to the committee for further action.