The Legislature is in full swing with policy committee hearings, debating, and amending legislation in their committees. All bills voted out of their policy committee(s) that have a fiscal impact are sent to the Appropriations Committee. Bills that pass out of Appropriations continue onto the floor for a full vote by the Assembly or the Senate. If passed, the bill resumes a similar process in the opposite house.

CAMFT Sponsored Legislation:

MFTs and AMFTs in FQHC and Rural Health Clinics: SB 966 (Limon) Co-Sponsor: This bill removes administrative barriers that have prevented MFTs from providing treatment in Federally Qualified Health Clinics (FQHC) and Rural Health Clinics (RHC). Current Medi-Cal policy requires FQHCs and RHCs to file a new "scope of services" when adding a new provider, like MFTs. By eliminating this administrative hurdle, FQHCs and RHCs may hire MFTs to help ensure services are available to their patients and increase access to behavioral health treatment.

Additionally, this bill makes a Federal COVID-19 pandemic waiver permanent and allows Associate Marriage and Family Therapists and Associate Clinical Social Workers to work in FQHCs and RHCs. This will provide an additional opportunity for these associate clinicians to pursue their clinical hours required for state licensure and improve access to consumers.

Below is a summary of bills impacting MFTs:

Remote Supervision: AB 1758 (Aguilar-Curry) Support: This bill allows for the remote supervision of pre-licensees, without regard to the setting, by defining supervision as "face-to-face contact" to mean in-person contact or contact via two-way, real-time videoconferencing, or some combination of these.

This measure is urgent legislation which means it will go into effect immediately if signed by the Governor. The bill also includes a sunset of 2026 that allows for a re-evaluation of the supervision policy. CAMFT supports this bill.

Continuing Education: AB 1759 (Aguilar-Curry) Support: This bill requires all BBS registrants to complete a one-time three-hour Telehealth course. This bill also requires registrants to complete a three-hour Law and Ethics (L&E) course at each renewal. This is a new requirement for associates, but it aligns their Law and Ethics education with licensees and seeks to ensure that there is no gap in their law and ethics education. The new L&E requirements in this measure replace the existing 12-hour course requirement. CAMFT supports this bill.

Civil damages: Medical Malpractice: AB 35 (Reyes and Umberg): This bill updates existing malpractice damages cap awarded for pain, suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment, disfigurement and other damages from $250,000 to a specified formula. The formula requires the cap increase by $40,000 on January 1 every 10 years until 2034. At that time, the damages for personal injury an wrongful death would be adjusted for inflation on January 1st each year by 2%. CAMFT is evaluating this recently amended bill.

CAMFT encourages all members to visit CAMFT’s Legislative Action Page to learn about all of the bills CAMFT follows, including in-depth descriptions, legislative analyses, and up-to-date status reports. You can also subscribe here to CAMFT’s Action E-Lerts for CAMFT emails on key pieces of Legislation.

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