Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced on June 2 that Georgia has become the fifth state to offer a streamlined licensing process for professional counselors. The state joined Arizona, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Ohio in adopting the Counseling Compact, a multistate agreement that grants licensed professional counselors reciprocity and allows them to more easily obtain licenses when moving between participating states.
“We are proud to join this multistate coalition to remove red tape for our licensed professional counselors,” said Secretary Raffensperger. “This allows new Georgians to get to work faster.”
Currently, Georgia has 12,175 active professional counselor licenses. Under the new compact guidelines, only Licensed Professional Counselors with an active and unencumbered license are eligible for compact privileges; Associate Professional Counselors do not qualify. Eligible licensees must first submit an amendment application through their GOALS licensure account. After processing and approval of this application, they may then apply for compact privileges via CompactConnect. Eligibility files will be pulled and transmitted every Monday to CompactConnect.
As additional states implement the issuance of compact privileges under the Counseling Compact, licensees in Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Ohio will have expanded opportunities to apply for practice privileges within those jurisdictions.
More information about the Counseling Compact and its implementation timeline is available at counselingcompact.gov.
