When searching for a therapist, you might notice the letters LMSW or PLPC behind their name. These letters mean that the therapist has graduated from graduate school and is working in their first job. Therapists have to work for a certain number of hours under a licensed supervisor before they are fully licensed. In the field of Social Work and Counseling, that amount of time is around 3000 hours or 2 years.
Clinical Supervision
Clinical supervisors are licensed therapists who guide therapists in their work with clients. If your therapist is under clinical supervision, it means that your therapist is discussing their clients with their supervisor. Provisionally licensed therapists usually get 1 hour of clinical supervision a week. Supervisors help therapists to assess, develop treatment plans and to make progress with their clients. New therapists sometimes also get consultation with other colleagues or the supervisor at their place of work. (Any discussion of your case is protected by HIPPA laws).
When you are seeing a provisionally licensed therapist, you are getting the expertise of 2 people.
Some other reasons that you may decide to choose a pre licensed therapist:
- You might be a college student who wants to see a younger therapist.
- You may want to see a therapist who is right our of school and using new, fresh methods..
- A pre-licensed therapist will also cost significantly less. This makes therapy accessible to more people.
At Modern Therapy and Wellness if you are seeing a pre-licensed therapist, know that we are very thorough in our hiring process. We aim to hire therapists whose values line up with our mission statement, which is:
We believe that therapy should be warm yet direct.
We believe that therapy should give people skills and tools.
We believe that people can unlearn and relearn.
We believe that emotional health is just as important as physical health.
We love our clients.
We provide telehealth so that therapy can literally be at your fingertips.
We believe in a thorough assessment so that we can understand our clients.
We believe that good therapy starts with our relationship with our clients.
Our process of interviewing pre-licensed therapists includes the following questions:
What type of clients do you work best with?
What are your areas of specialization?
How do you establish relationships with a new client?
What attracted you to this field and to our practice?
What is your long term / short term goals?
How would you handle x, y,z ?
At MTW, in addition to our pre licensed therapists meeting with their clinical supervisor, they also get an additional hour of supervision at our practice.
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