FL Board Meeting Notes 05-29-26

Hi everyone,

As per usual, here are the notes from the most recent board meeting that was held 05/29. This was a contentious meeting- lots of consequences as a result of difficulties with board communication and processing of applications and responses. As usual, no personal names or identifying information will be given for disciplinary proceedings. You are free to look up any of the publicly available information to review, however, through the board meetings page: https://floridasmentalhealthprofessions.gov/meeting.../ Just be sure to select “past events” since it is slightly different since the board website changed.

Rules Discussion

• Rule 64B4-2.002, Florida Administrative Code – Definition of “Supervision” for Clinical Social Work, Marriage and Family Therapy and Mental Health Counseling- the big news from this meeting- the sections originally added in here from the emergency telehealth orders started during COVID are officially STAYING. As I stated in the preliminary post that was here earlier: “Now, as I have said before, the telehealth order states that fully virtual supervision may continue if doing so is in the best interest for the health and safety of the registered intern, the QS, and the patients involved. During COVID this was easy to justify and not asked about when interns submitted their hours. Now that the telehealth order is ending and this is being incorporated into typical statutes, we do not know if they will now be asking for justification in keeping supervision virtual. So, just to CYA, if I am a QS doing fully virtual supervision with my interns, I would begin documenting exactly how the fully virtual supervision is for the health and safety of the involved parties. We do NOT know how much of a stickler board staff will be about it. They technically can be, though."

• There is NO UPDATE on the “on premises” update from the board meeting. So for now, continue having someone PHYSICALLY PRESENT who is licensed while registered interns are seeing patients if you are working in a private practice.

Disciplinary Proceedings

• More out of state telehealth licensed folx getting disciplined due to having issues in their home state. There are EVEN MORE cases that occurred out of state involving very inappropriate interpersonal interactions and relationships with clients. Please DO NOT INTERACT with any of your clients outside of the therapy space. Even if they try and get you to. Dual relationships is a thing and will get you in trouble.

• A particular sticking point is the statute required to report to the board any disciplinary issues going on in other states, whether they be with the board or judicially. You have 5 days upon a report or pleading/being convicted of a crime to report that to the board. Don’t forget.

• There were a couple of fraud cases, some within the disciplinary proceedings and others within a couple other categories. Do NOT invoice or bill for sessions that never happened. Please just don’t.

• I will discuss this more further down, but board members have been encouraging registered interns who are not getting proper Qualified Supervision to report their supervisors to the board. If you are a QS, PLEASE make sure you are keeping up with everything related to documenting, reporting, and otherwise keeping organized with your supervisees. You CANNOT refuse to fill out paperwork or documentation and you CANNOT ghost your supervisees. Board is looking to prosecute more QS’ who are failing their responsibilities.

General Notes

• There was a variance/waiver referred to DOAH because of board inability to respond to the petition in time. This is a very rare situation and hopefully does not set a precedent due to the ongoing issues they are having in just keeping up with everything.

• SOOO MANY variance/waiver requests for hours to be accepted from non-approved QS’. Almost all of them were denied. PLEASE ENSURE YOUR QS IS APPROVED BEFORE STARTING SUPERVISION AND HOURS ACCRUING.

• Board is becoming more and more concerned over productivity hours for registered interns working in different positions. There were interns present in front of the board for disciplinary stuff as well as variance/waiver requests who were routinely seeing 30-35 patients a week and having caseloads of 50-60+. They do not see this as appropriate for the wellbeing of the supervisees.

• The board seems like they are starting to take note of recurring issues from supervisees and licensed providers from particular agencies/companies. They named one on the meeting as concerning. While they cannot go directly after an agency or company they will continue going after licensed providers within those organizations who are not operating the way they should be.

• DO NOT. I REPEAT. DO NOT. FORGE DOCUMENTATION. If there is a problem with receiving proper paperwork and communication to support your own cause at these meetings, just tell them that. They can decide what to do from there.

• The background checks/fingerprinting is catching more licensees for past legal history that they otherwise would not have reported. If you have a legal history that falls under the reporting guidelines on the application, PLEASE make sure that you report it. You can possibly get out of coming in front of the board with proper paperwork and explanations if you report versus them catching you in the level 2 and forcing you to come and explain yourself to them.

• Lots and lots of egregious behaviors from QS’ being noted throughout the meeting in different situations. I imagine there will be more board reports going on due to QS’ shirking their responsibilities and looking to make easy money. DO NOT TAKE THIS LIGHTLY. Being a QS is a responsibility.

• Lots of self-perjury going on. I know this is quasi-judicial, but many people representing themselves pro-se are admitting that they are breaking the law without intending to. That does not look good to the board. The honesty is appreciated but this is the time to get a legal consult to ensure you are presenting your case properly and making these disclosures carefully. Hearings for applications are turning into investigations on court record.

• Board acknowledges that the turnaround time and calls are horrible. They are doing their best to improve on it. They are down to 6 staff and receive over 1500 emails a week and 1200 calls per week. I know that it is little solace for those left hanging for months at a time. They are going to start releasing a quarterly report on the amount of work they are doing between meetings. They are also communicating with different professional orgs on their workflow. We hope to also communicate with board staff in disseminating information to help with cutting down on calls and emails to them. They have also implemented ELI into the call system- you can still push 0 to be connected with a live agent, and there are currently 4 people answering the phones. Right now the average wait time for speaking to someone is around 2 hours.

• Board has reiterated that YOU CAN REAPPLY FOR REGISTERED INTERNSHIP. Hours will count between registered intern 5 year periods. You will complete the hours verification form at the end of your first 5 year period and either hold onto it or submit it to the board when you start your next 5 years. The process to actually apply is still funky and that was not elaborated on- right now the process we are aware of is completing a paper application.

• COUNSELING COMPACT- HOPEFULLY final update on this. They have loaded all the provider data onto the network and are doing final testing to ensure it is all smooth before rollout. Right now they are estimating June or early July for launch. So good news for those who want to participate!

• SOCIAL WORK COMPACT- Social Work Compact was NOT passed this year, so I will update on this next legislative session.

  
  

And that is it! Lots of different things going on right now. We are going to do our best to keep you all updated of these changes. If there are any questions about this info, we can discuss in the comments. 🙂