Overview of IARP Coalition Meeting October 18-19, 2014
Chicago, IL
The International Association of Rehabilitation Professionals (IARP) will host a meeting of leaders from 10 rehabilitation counseling organizations, as well as the Commission of Rehabilitation Counselor Credentialing (CRCC) and the Council on Rehabilitation Education (CORE) in Chicago, October 18 – 19, 2014. The rehabilitation counseling profession has come up against a number of challenges over the years, and challenges have not slowed.
The recent reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998 and programs administered under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 by House Bill 803, also known as the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), is headed to President Obama for signature. Initially the Senate’s version of the bill (S. 1356) would have relocated the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The bill was amended after an outcry from stakeholders about the potential dangers of moving RSA from DOE to DOL with the strong and successful recommendation to keep RSA under DOE. However, there remains another concern by the rehabilitation community about House Bill 803 remains. In it the Comprehensive System of Personnel Development (CSPD) standards have been diluted to include other academic degrees outside of the rehabilitation disciplines, such as business degrees.
As a community with so many professional associations and multiple credentialing and accreditation bodies, it is hard to avoid continued fragmentation of the rehabilitation-counseling field. Although attempts have been made in the past to bring some of our organizations together, IARP feels another attempt should be made. In particular, we need to gain consensus on the following issues:
- How to define and distinguish our profession
- How best to advocate for the services we provide and the need for these services
- How best to challenge and ensure that proposed legislation, which dilutes the educational requirements and/or credentials needed to do our work (and thereby allows less-qualified professions to become involved), is stopped.
These challenges and others need to be monitored, addressed and resolved to the best of our abilities to ensure optimum quality is provided to the disability community we serve.
Some of the leaders of our profession teleconferenced on August 11, 2014, to consider these issues and the direction of the profession and how we as a group can address the continuing challenges we face. At the upcoming coalition meeting we plan to identify the primary challenges facing the
rehabilitation counseling profession and develop a game plan to be implemented immediately thereafter.
We are hopeful that a fresh look at the issues will help define a new strategy and provide an improved and long-lasting result for our profession.
For more information on the IARP Coalition meeting, contact Lynne Tracy, President IARP, lynnetracy@sbcglobal.net.