California Business and Professions Code

§ 4980.37

BPC § 4980.37 Effective Jan 1, 2022Div. 2 · Ch. 13 · Art. 1

Statute text

(a)This section shall apply to applicants for licensure or registration who began graduate study before August 1, 2012, and completed that study on or before December 31, 2018. Those applicants may alternatively qualify under paragraph (2) of subdivision (a) of Section 4980.36.

(b)To qualify for a license or registration, applicants shall possess a doctoral or master’s degree in marriage, family, and child counseling, marriage and family therapy, couple and family therapy, psychology, clinical psychology, counseling psychology, or either counseling or clinical mental health counseling with an emphasis in either marriage, family, and child counseling or marriage and family therapy. The degree shall be obtained from a school, college, or university accredited by a regional or national institutional accrediting agency that is recognized by the United States Department of Education or approved by the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education. The board has the authority to make the final determination as to whether a degree meets all requirements, including, but not limited to, course requirements, regardless of accreditation or approval. In order to qualify for licensure pursuant to this section, a doctoral or master’s degree program shall be a single, integrated program primarily designed to train marriage and family therapists and shall contain no less than 48 semester units or 72 quarter units of instruction. This instruction shall include no less than 12 semester units or 18 quarter units of coursework in the areas of marriage, family, and child counseling, and marital and family systems approaches to treatment. The coursework shall include all of the following areas:

(1)The salient theories of a variety of psychotherapeutic orientations directly related to marriage and family therapy, and marital and family systems approaches to treatment.

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Legislative history

Amended by Stats. 2021, Ch. 647, Sec. 25. (SB 801) Effective January 1, 2022.