HEY, NEW YORK!!! DID YOU KNOW???
In an effort to help keep NYS music therapists informed regarding the Licensed Creative Arts Therapist (LCAT) law and regulations, we are pleased to offer this little column of regulatory tidbits!
This Issue’s Feature:
CONTINUING EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS – CALCULATING AND RECALCULATING!!!
In case you haven’t heard … effective January 1, 2017, LCATs must earn 36 hours of approved continuing education (CE) for every 3-year registration period. All CE must be taken from a state-approved provider, and any CE completed prior to January 1, 2017 will not be accepted.
In our last column, we highlighted the process of accruing the required CE hours and maintaining adequate documentation in case of audit. In this column, we are offering some helpful hints on how to calculate your hours should you be a presenter at a workshop or conference at which you are also a participant. There have been several such events recently, and we have learned some specifics that we want to pass along. Charge up your cell phone, put some new batteries in your calculator, and dust off your abacus!
Let’s say that you are presenting at an 8-hour, day-long workshop which is sponsored by a NYS-approved provider. You are registered to attend the full 8-hour workshop, and your presentation is 90-minutes long. As this is a pre-approved workshop, the sponsors will be providing attendees with a certificate upon completion. However, since you are presenting for 90 minutes, you are not eligible to earn the full 8 hours, and will need to work with the sponsors for them to produce a certificate for you that indicates 6.5 hours of attendance.
That’s the bad news. The good news, however, is that you can claim credit for your 90-minute presentation. According to regulation, you can claim the actual time of your presentation plus up to 2 additional hours of preparation for each hour of presentation. So, for your 90-minute presentation you could claim 1.5 hours of presentation time and 3 hours of preparation, for a total of 4.5 hours. Add this to the 6.5 hours of attendance, and this entire day (presentation and prep time, plus attendance time) would provide you with 11 hours of NYS CE.
Still with us? Good. Now, to the matter of documentation.
As we have previously shared, you are responsible for maintaining documentation for your educational activities in case of audit. Forms of documentation can include:
- course descriptions, handouts and brochures that may document your first-time
- preparation and teaching a course offered by a NYSED-approved provider of continuing education to licensed creative arts therapists,
- an article published for the first time in a peer-reviewed journal, or a chapter in a book in the practice of creative arts therapy,
- a program for a juried show or performance, including the date,
- syllabi, power point slides, and examinations that are part of a course that was prepared and taught for the first time in a higher education institution or psychotherapy institute.
You must maintain these records for at least six years from the date of completion of the continuing education, and make them available for review by the department in case of audit. Because of this, we recommend that you create a filing system (whether it’s a folder, a binder, etc.) in which you can maintain paper copies of required documentation, and back it up with electronic files.
Do not send documentation of continuing education activities to NYSED unless you are audited. When it is time for you to renew your registration, you will be required to attest on your Registration Renewal Document that you completed the required continuing education hours, but you are not expected to provide evidence (such as is required by CBMT when going through the recertification process). If you have questions about this, please contact us for guidance.
As of June 23, there were 38 state-approved providers for CE for LCATs. 4 of these are music therapy providers:
Mid-Atlantic Region/AMTA (Course Type: Live In-Person)
Molloy College (Course Type: Live In-Person and Live Online)
Nazareth College (Course Type: Live In-Person)
SUNY New Paltz (Course Type: Live In-Person and Live Online)
We are pleased to report that the AMTA application to become a NYS-approved provider has been submitted and is under review as of the date of this report. You can find a complete list of approved providers here:
http://www.op.nysed.gov/prof/mhp/catceproviderlisting.htm
If you have specific questions or areas of law or regulation that you would like us to address in future issues, please notify us at our shiny new email address: