New Registered Counselor Survey.  Most of the new budget for the DOH work group will be spent on a new survey of RC's.  Last year's survey was a huge disappointment to private practice RC's. The questions were all geared toward licensure.  By the end of filling out the survey, I and hundreds of other private practice RC's who responded had succeeded only in letting the DOH know what we are not - i.e. not licensed, not planning to be licensed, not working in an agency, not in in a legally binding supervision agreement, etc.  The survey revealed nothing about our education and training, what populations we serve, or the nature of our practice.

This year WaProCA members have submitted a new set of questions to the DOH and are lobbying strongly for their use in the new survey.  We want a survey that results in real information about our practice, our training, our clientele. It remains to be seen how many of our suggestions will end up on the actual survey, but we're way ahead of last year when private practice RC's were simply invisible.

• If you are selected for the survey (it will be a telephone interview this time), give it your full time and attention.
  
• If you don't like the survey slant, contact the DOH (and cc your legislators) and give them feedback on the process.
  
• If you are not surveyed by the end of July, contact the DOH and ask how you can be part of the process of helping them find out more information about private practice RC's.
  
• Take the WaProCA survey. The more RC's who respond to our survey, the more accurate information we will have to contribute to the DOH work group.