What is acceptable clinical social work experience for licensure as an LCSW?
The Education Law requires an applicant for licensure as an LCSW to complete three years of full-time (or the part-time equivalent in no more than six years) supervised, post-degree experience in diagnosis, psychotherapy, and assessment-based treatment plans, acceptable to the Department. Full-time experience is defined as no more than 20 client contact hours in psychotherapy each week; part time experience must not be less than 10 client contact hours in each setting per week. Part-time experience is pro-rated (e.g., 15/20 = 0.75) so that the applicant will require more than three years to complete the equivalent of 36 months of supervised experience. Experience of less than 10 client contact hours per week is not acceptable for licensure. A client contact hour is a session of at least 45 minutes using verbal methods in interpersonal relationships to assist a person or persons to modify attitudes and behavior which are intellectually, socially, or emotionally maladaptive.
