Marriage & Family Therapy
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September 15, 2009
The Tennessee state legislature passed legislation this year to review the state of Child Protective Services in Tennessee. The intent is to get input from providers and families who have had experience with the system in order to support the Department of Children's Services in their mission to ensure the safety and quality of life for children and their families in Tennessee. The Select Committee on Children and Youth in the legislature is knowing suggestions for improvement of the Child Protective System as well as having input about the longterm effects of sexual abuse on individuals and families(i.e. depression, anger, impaired intimacy in marriages). If you are interested and willing to testify or be a resource in this area to the committee, please contact Richard Gillespie by email at rgillespie15@hotmail.com . The committee has not yet set hearings so that we are looking at this time to have a list of those MFT's willing to give input in one way or another. Thank you for your consideration in this matter.
Sincerely,
Richard Gillespie, President-elect, TAMFT
Tennessee Association for Marriage and Family Therapy wants to announce to our membership that the legislature has passed and Governor signed our state job classification bill into law. Tennessee is only the second state in the country to have this happen. The bill requires the state Department of Human Resources to begin creating state job classifications for licensed marriage and family therapists according to our scope of practice. These positions will not be funded and fully staffed until the economy picks up and the state is looking for new employees. At the moment the state has a hiring freeze on and is worried about possible layoffs. But this should result in improved mental health services for the families we serve as a family systems view is brought into state agencies. It should mean improved opportunities for our profession in jobs in state departments like Mental Health, Children's Services, and Corrections as examples. We have offered the state an advisory committee from our membership to help in implementing this law. We wish to thank all those members who wrote their state representatives and took part in other ways to promote this bill. We could have only done this working together.
Sincerely,
Linda Oxford, LCSW,LMFT, President , TAMFT
Richard Gillespie, LMFT. M. Div. , President-elect, TAMFT