Kansas ranks at the bottom for mental health care. Social workers need more help | Opinion

Kansas ranked last in Mental Health America’s State of Mental Health in America 2023 report. The need for improved mental health care is impossible to ignore. To that end, our state took an important step to create social worker jobs and facilitate care across the state by joining the Social Work Licensure Compact in April.

The compact creates a multistate license that allows social workers to offer telehealth services in all participating states. Currently, licensed social workers must complete a monthslong licensing process to practice in any additional states, draining valuable time away from caring for clients. The compact will allow social workers to efficiently expand their care across the 22 states that have joined.

Multistate licenses are hardly a new idea. In fact, almost every American over the age of 16 has one in their wallet: Driver’s licenses are an accepted form of multistate licensing. In health care alone, there are already interstate licenses for psychologists, nurses, physicians, physical therapists and more. Similar to a driver’s license, social workers will abide by the specific requirements of the state in which their client resides. Applying this familiar, well-tested model to social work is a long overdue change that is integral to addressing our mental health care shortage.

The compact allows social workers and clients to continue benefiting from their relationships, even as life requires out-of-state relocation. Building trust with social workers or any mental health professional takes time. When clients move out of state under the current licensing structure, social workers are faced with two choices: Give up the relationship, or spend months getting licensed in another state. Because of the nationwide shortage of social workers, it is likely that clients would spend months languishing on waiting lists while their needs go unaddressed. The compact allows uninterrupted access to continued care. This is essential for people already undergoing crises that could feel exasperated by the demands of moving to a new state.

Multistate licenses especially benefit rural communities, which bear the brunt of the shortage. In southeast Kansas, for example, there are only 35 licensed social workers serving 16 counties. The compact allows rural Kansans residents to access care remotely from across the country, rather than being limited to those within one state.

The licenses also benefit the families of military service members. Social workers who are military spouses find themselves relocating every few years, creating a significant strain as they regularly lose their license and clientele. Their sacrifice is great enough without needlessly handicapping their professional lives. Now, under a multistate licensing structure, military spouses can continue serving their clients even as our country calls them from state to state.

While this legislation is a significant step toward addressing Kansas’s mental health needs, policymakers must address factors that keep would-be social workers from joining the field. Social workers have low salaries that make the debt incurred during graduate school difficult to pay off. Initiatives such as paid internships, scholarships and loan forgiveness programs are the next step.

The multistate compact is an important step in making tangible improvements for social workers and their clients across Kansas. While we have a long way to go before our most vulnerable residents have sufficient access to the proper resources, it has started enacting meaningful change.

Betsy Cauble is a board member at Preferra Insurance Company RRG, a behavioral health liability insurance company overseen by social workers, and the retired department head and associate professor of social work emeritus at Kansas State University.

This story was originally published August 21, 2024 at 5:12 AM.