| Frequently Asked Questions
for Consumers and Payors
What is ABE?
What is the BCD certification?
What are ABE’s Specialty Credentials?
What is the role of the BCD in the healthcare industry?
What are ABE's information services?
Who holds the BCD certification?
What does ABE do for clinical social workers?
What's the difference between the BCD and other credentials?
Why does a state-licensed clinician need the BCD?
What is the BCD application process?
What is ABE?
The American Board of Examiners in Clinical Social Work (ABE) is a national, independent nonprofit certification organization dedicated solely to advanced clinical social work. With volunteer board members and a full-time staff, ABE promotes uniform national standards to the profession and the healthcare delivery system, maintains an OnLine BCD Directory of its certificants, and advocates for all of advanced clinical social work.
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What is the BCD certification?
The Board Certified Diplomate in Clinical Social Work (BCD) is an advanced-practice certification that embodies the highest standards in the field in the areas of clinical education, training, and experience. Prospective BCD clinicians are required to have the following minimum qualifications (summarized):
- Master's (or doctoral) degree in social work with coursework and fieldwork focused on direct practice
- Licensure at the highest clinical level available in the state(s) where the clinician practices
- Five years/7,500 hours' post-graduate clinical social work practice, including 3,000 hours under supervision (1,500 hours supervised by a clinical social worker)
- 40 hours of clinical continuing education in the past three years, with 20 hours in the past 12 months
- Since 1997, successful completion of an application process with clinical peer evaluations.
BCD clinicians recertify annually on the basis of currency of direct practice, 20 hours of continuing clinical education, maintenance of licensure in good standing, and adherence to ABE's Code of Ethics.
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What are ABE’s Specialty Credentials?
ABE offers clinical social work specialty credentials in Practice with Children & their Families and in Psychoanalysis. These credentials are offered to BCD clinicians who have the skill and knowledge required for specialty practice. The competency-based application process includes confidential evaluations by professional colleagues.
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What is the role of the BCD in the healthcare industry?
In an industry concerned with the delivery of high quality, cost effective, preventive behavioral healthcare, the BCD certification allows healthcare provider systems to identify competent clinical social workers. Through employment, referrals, and contracting, these professionals meet the needs of healthcare industry as it adopts national standards for quality care.
BCD-holders' personal profiles are accessed through ABE’s OnLine BCD Directory, available to managed-care organizations, public and private agencies, hospitals, EAPs, and others at no charge. The Directory allows for easy sorts and searches and assists in referral making and network development.
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What are ABE's information services?
ABE publishes all BCD clinicians' personalized profiles in the OnLine BCD Directory. The detailed BCD profiles contain information on education, training, experience, and practice. They attract referral-makers among Practitioners, EAPs, PPOs, HMOs, hospitals, clinics, agencies, and insurers. All ABE's information services are made available at no charge, and are updated in real time.
The OnLine BCD Directory permits high-speed searches of the BCD database by city, county, state, area code, zip code, and/or focus of practice. Results may be downloaded in order to offer practice and referral opportunities to BCD clinicians.
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Who holds the BCD certification?
Over 8,000 advanced clinical social workers across the U.S. hold the BCD certification. They come from all clinical social work backgrounds and practice in all settings.
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What does ABE do for clinical social workers?
ABE sets and safeguards national clinical social work practice standards, awards and promotes the BCD certification, and awards specialty credentials in Practice With Children & Their Families and in Psychoanalysis. ABE also publishes a national BCD Online Directory that is searchable, sortable, and more versatile than any other such service. ABE distributes its information services to referral-making payor systems and to all BCD clinicians. ABE publishes papers on clinical social work practice, a newsletter, and tracks the activities of the healthcare industry. ABE advocates with state and federal government, and intervenes with any system that discriminates against clinical social work.
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What's the difference between the BCD and other credentials?
The BCD certification is the gold standard in clinical social work—it is rigorous in criteria, and is the most intensely promoted and widely recognized. As the emblem of clinical competence at the advanced level and of unique annual recertification, the certification is highly valued by referral-makers, including national payor systems, to which it has been professionally marketed since 1990. Knowing that BCD clinicians are annually verified by ABE to be current in practice at the advanced and specialty practice level(s) in good standing, insurance companies and other payors tend to give them preference when filling provider panels and offering other opportunities for reimbursable practice. Insurance companies and other payors may access ABE's OnLine BCD Directory FREE of CHARGE, which gives BCD clinicians thousands more opportunities for referrals than does any other directory in the field of mental-emotional healthcare!
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Why does a state-licensed clinician need the BCD?
The BCD is a national certification, crossing all state lines with a uniform set of advanced criteria—any payor doing business nationwide or regionally will have a keen interest in the BCD. Licensure criteria are variable and pitched at the entry level of practice; by contrast, the BCD embodies uniform standards and is a means of distinguishing high levels of practice competence. Few state regulatory agencies publish their databases, and none markets them; ABE publishes detailed personalized profiles about all BCD clinicians in the OnLine BCD Directory and markets them nationwide to payors and professionals.
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What is the BCD application process?
The BCD application process examines the candidate’s competence as an advanced practitioner in these three areas:
- academic and practice background
- continuing clinical education
- practice abilities, rated by confidential evaluations by clinical peers
The Board’s mandate is to assess the candidate’s practice-related competence rather than the type of knowledge measured by a multiple-choice test.”
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