Good News for Spiritual Care Practitioners seeking registration with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO)

Lately, certified spiritual care practitioners seeking registration with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) have been facing obstacles. Until recently, CRPO has been grandparenting spiritual care practitioners into the college by registering them without a rigorous verification process. Grandparenting is now over and many spiritual care providers are finding the CRPO has made it next to impossible for them to prove their training and education provided through the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care is substantially equivalent to a registered psychotherapy program.

This seemed unfair so I wrote a paper showing how Supervised Pastoral Education is substantially equivalent. The article was peer reviewed and published this week online in the Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling. You can read it here.

The article has already been presented as part of an appeal to the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board (HPARB) challenging the CPRO's rejection of an application. I am happy to report the CRPO Registration Committee has responded favourably and are willing to grant a certificate of registration if the applicant takes four additional courses.

If you are one of the many applicants who have been rejected because your SPE/CPE educational units were not considered substantially equivalent to an registered program, reference this article and get in touch with me if you need more help.

Christian Education in a Secular Age Conference

Briercrest College and Seminary is hosting a two day online conference addressing Christian Education in a Secular Age. Here's a link to the schedule. I blogged about it back in the summer, when I found out my abstract was accepted. I finished video recording my paper for presentation and it is being uploaded as I write this post. 

In addition to my paper addressing online education I will also be participating in a roundtable discussion about educating clergy for wholeness. In that segment I will be talking about the role of practicums in pastoral formation programs. I will address some of the challenges I see, namely, training supervisors. I'll also touch on the interesting dynamic of Supervised Pastoral Education programs that appear to equip pastors to function as chaplains. 

There is still time to register for the conference and join the conversation. Here's a link if you're interested.