We pride ourselves on employing highly educated, licensed, and certified mental health professionals to work with our Veterans and their families here at Little Blessings. We believe this ensures that those we serve receive the highest quality care possible, and they deserve nothing less than our best! So what exactly does it take to gain the necessary education and maintain the proper licensure to provide mental healthcare in the state of Michigan?
Both of Little Blessings’ Mental Health Specialists (Mary Beth Wright, LMSW and Rain Glynn, MSW, LLMSW/LSW) are Licensed Social Workers. They both hold masters degrees in social work, which take 5 or more years of schooling and more than 1,200 hours of unpaid field experience to earn. Once they are awarded a graduate level degree, they are then required to obtain provisional licensure and complete 4,000 supervised hours of clinical practice to become eligible to sit for an independent licensure exam.
That must be it, right? Nope! In order to maintain their licensure, they must participate in 45 hours of continuing education courses and trainings each licensure cycle (3 years). Our MHs are also certified by Eagala to provide equine therapy specifically, which requires a multi-day intensive training and then 20 yearly hours of additional continuing education.
Certainly that must be the extent of it? Almost! Mary Beth Wright, our resident Trauma Specialist and EMDR practitioner, had to participate in yet another intensive, multi-day training and several hours of consultation in order to become trained to provide EMDR services.
Little Blessings invests significant time and resources into making sure the services we provide are of a high quality and highly ethical! That is part of what makes our organization and the programs we offer so special! Stay tuned for next week to learn what it takes to become a certified Equine Specialist!
For more information on our quality programs for Veterans and their families, visit lbveteranoutreach.org/empowerment/