Hello everyone. I am looking for some guidance on the licensure process in New Jersey from anyone who has gone through it or who is also pursuing licensure there. I finished internship with 530 direct contact hours (it was college counseling internship), and I will finish my post doc year at a supervised staff position in Georgia with approximately 580 hours. I had more than the requisite 200 supervision hours on internship (250 to be exact). However, I only formally meet for supervision for one hour per week at my position now, which means I am well short of the necessary 200 supervision hours (I will finish with about 50 in total, although I also meet weekly for case conference which I suppose could be considered group supervision?). I'm also aware that NJ has a requirement about the ratio of supervision hours to direct contact hours (1 to 5), and that NJ limits the number of hours accrued per week to 20, which seems to complicate things further and is confusing to me. Any guidance on what my path towards licensure in New Jersey would be? I certainly will need further supervised practice (at least another year), that much is clear. Thank you!
Psychology Licensure in New Jersey
- Thread starter phauge
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Like, meet NJ requirements?
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I would check with the board directly. If they require a specific ratio of contact-to-supervision hours and you aren't meeting that ratio, they may either disregard those clinical hours completely, or only count a certain amount (e.g., 5 hours in your case, to go with the 1 hour of supervision). Their regulations should hopefully also define what they count as supervision, so you can determine if the case conferences meet the bill.
Yes. You are able to make up any hours that you didn't get on internship or post doc later, so I am trying to figure out exactly how to meet their specific requirements.
GrapesOfMath
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I'm in NJ. I did post doc to licensure in one one fell swoop here, rather than switching states, but I can tell you some basics. You definitely need 1000 direct hours post-internship. You should check with them if you need to re-do any internship hours - I believe there may be little more leniency on the exact number of hours, if it was part of an APA internship that is designed to be full time for one year, but I am not sure about that.
Also the 20 hr/wk cap is more about how much you can practice in NJ on your temporary permit. The idea is that if you had to stop practicing suddenly, your supervisor could absorb your caseload. So it does throttle how quickly you can accrue your hours in NJ, but I don't think it would affect which previously accrued hours would count. Obviously you should double check that, too.
It sounds like what you need to do is find a job as an unlicensed psychologist/permit psychologist that can give you plenty of supervision (which you may need to pay for, of course). And start the licensure application, which will grant you a temporary permit. You do need to have your future supervisor fill out part of the license application, but you may be able to get the process rolling before you have a job, as it can take them months to process it. I had my job already lined up before I applied, and I think it took like 2.5 months before they issued my permit and I could start working. I think if you can start the application process ASAP to start finding out how much of your past hours will count, that would be a good idea.
And then of course to get licensed, you have to take the jurisprudence exam. In NJ, you have to FINISH all of your supervised hours before they let you sit for the exam.
Have you taken the EPPP yet? Same deal here as jurisprudence - you can't sit for EPPP until you finish your hours. So if you're able to sign up for that through Georgia now, that will be much more efficient than waiting for NJ to sponsor you. Otherwise the process is: Get all hours finished/approved by board, THEN pass EPPP, THEN take jurisprudence. With a several week administrative wait in between each step.
But hey, they tend to pay unlicensed psychologists a lot here, so the wait isn't too bad.
Also the 20 hr/wk cap is more about how much you can practice in NJ on your temporary permit. The idea is that if you had to stop practicing suddenly, your supervisor could absorb your caseload. So it does throttle how quickly you can accrue your hours in NJ, but I don't think it would affect which previously accrued hours would count. Obviously you should double check that, too.
It sounds like what you need to do is find a job as an unlicensed psychologist/permit psychologist that can give you plenty of supervision (which you may need to pay for, of course). And start the licensure application, which will grant you a temporary permit. You do need to have your future supervisor fill out part of the license application, but you may be able to get the process rolling before you have a job, as it can take them months to process it. I had my job already lined up before I applied, and I think it took like 2.5 months before they issued my permit and I could start working. I think if you can start the application process ASAP to start finding out how much of your past hours will count, that would be a good idea.
And then of course to get licensed, you have to take the jurisprudence exam. In NJ, you have to FINISH all of your supervised hours before they let you sit for the exam.
Have you taken the EPPP yet? Same deal here as jurisprudence - you can't sit for EPPP until you finish your hours. So if you're able to sign up for that through Georgia now, that will be much more efficient than waiting for NJ to sponsor you. Otherwise the process is: Get all hours finished/approved by board, THEN pass EPPP, THEN take jurisprudence. With a several week administrative wait in between each step.
But hey, they tend to pay unlicensed psychologists a lot here, so the wait isn't too bad.
This is enormously helpful, thank you. So my situation is that I am currently working in a staff position in Georgia, with hopes of moving back to New Jersey in the next 1 to 3 years, so there isn't a significant time constraint at the moment. My hope is to continue to accrue supervised hours here even after I am licensed, as one of the psychologists here agreed to continue meeting for supervision even after I get licensed. A follow up question: how important is the 1 to 5 ratio of supervision hours to direct client contact hours? On your postdoc were you meeting for supervision enough to meet the 1 to 5 ratio? I've never heard of post doc that offers 4 hours of weekly supervision (assuming you also accrue a full 1000 direct contact hours), but I could be wrong.
Yes, I have already passed the EPPP. In fact, I am just a month or 2 away from completing Georgia licensure.
GrapesOfMath
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Ah, I see, that clarifies things a lot.
So, yes, I counted 1000 clinical hours. Took over a year, with the 20 hr/wk cap, because of cancellations, holidays, etc. My out-of-state internship signed off on 1000 hours based on blunt numbers - "yeah, she saw about x patients/wk for a year"; my postdoc required me to actually count. That may be site-specific, I don't know.
And yes, I did have 4 hours of supervision a week. 2 one-on-one, 2 group. Your case conference may count as group supervision; I also see people use team meetings if they are clinically oriented and run by a licensed psychologist. I definitely feel like your best bet would be to just pay someone in Georgia to give you extra supervision. It's gonna be way cheaper than to do it in NJ.
Although, again, I only know the rules for doing postdoc-to-licensure in NJ. It is possible that if you are already licensed in another state, they may waive some of the requirements. But either way I think you should start contacting the board now and make sure you're on track. The board here is notorious for having a lot of difficult bureaucratic hoops to jump through. 1-3 years sounds like a lot of time, but it took me just about 2 years to get licensed in NJ, for getting 1000 hours and taking both tests; that was working full-time, no kids or any type of extended leave/other hiccups. So if you may have to accrue 900 more hours and take just the one test, that could easily take 1-1.5 years, if all the same requirements apply. It would really suck to have to re-do anything once you get here.
