Next Meeting: This Friday, February 9th, at 7 PM at the South Snohomish
County PUD auditorium. Katie Evans: "Thinking BIG About Your Business."
Visit www.nghwa.org <http://www.nghwa.org/> for details.

Important Information For NGHWA Members and Friends,

Yesterday's Seattle Times featured a story about the upcoming
legislative changes facing registered counselors in the State of
Washington. We are as yet unsure how these changes will impact the
Hypnosis profession, but we encourage everyone to become educated about
the issues and consider how you would be affected if the State of
Washington decided to take away our right to practice.

To that end, I have provided some detailed information below for your
reference:

1. Some background information on the National Federation of
Hypnotists, a Union for Hypnotists, which I encourage everyone to sign
up for;
2. A letter from Miriam Dyak, President, Washington Professional
Counselors Association
with background information about the legal issues and how to contact
your legislators.

The National Federation of Hypnotists - The Political, Legislative and
governmental affiliate of The National Guild of Hypnotists, Inc.

The National Federation of Hypnotists OPEIU-AFL-CIO is an independent
organization that functions as the political affiliate of the National
Guild of Hypnotists. It is chartered as Local 104 of the Office and
Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) of the AFL-CIO and
CLC, the union that represents physicians, nurses, chiropractors,
podiatrists, acupuncturists, midwives and other health care workers.
OPEIU has represented hypnotists since 1980. Affiliation with the
AFL-CIO gives hypnotists access to the political and legislative
apparatus of the AFL-CIO at every level of State and Federal Government.

The Federation, or NFH 104 for short, has a national jurisdiction with
members throughout the United States, Canada and England. NFH 104 has
done more to protect the rights of hypnotists to practice that all of
the other hypnotist organizations combined. Any hypnotherapist may join
NFH 104 provided that you support the standards recommended for the
practice of hypnosis and have a minimum of 100 hours of training in
hypnosis.

NFH 104 maintains an exhaustive database of legislation, maintains a
national legislation watch regarding laws that might effect the right of
hypnotists to practice, and has a good record of success intervening in
specific states to protect the rights of individual practitioners who
are under media or political attack.

Membership benefits include:

* Political advocacy in your state to protect your right to practice
hypnosis. * Political and Legal assistance if you are personally
attacked by the media. * The right to vote on issues affecting
professional hypnotism. * Access to union benefit plans (mortgages,
student loans, legal services). * Assistance in setting up your
practice to conform to the laws of your state. * The satisfaction
of knowing you are doing your part to protect your profession.

If you wish to join NFH 104 you can obtain an application by writing to:

NFH 104 Secretary/Treasurer
Sharon Morris
P.O. Box 815
Merrimack, NH 03054
Phone: (603) 424-2136 FAX: (603) 424-2136 E-mail Address -
hypnounionsec@... <mailto:hypnounionsec@...>

Current dues are $16.50 per month, plus a one time initiation fee. Dues
can be paid annually or bi-annually.


Letter from Miriam Dyak, President, Washington Professional Counselors
Association


I am writing to ask for your support for myself and for other registered
counselors in Washington State. Last week legislation was introduced
into both the House (HB 1494) and the Senate (SB 5579) to completely
eliminate registered counselors by July 2009 and force about 7,000
registered counselors in private practice to either go out of business
or go back to school to become mental health care professionals trained
to work with abnormal psychology and mental, emotional, and behavioral
disorders. As most registered counselors work with a wellness model of
personal growth and the development of human potential, switching over
to a medical model of illness and treatment for illness is unacceptable
on many levels. It conflicts with many of the basic theories behind the
modalities in which we are skilled and it forces us into an area of
practice that runs counter to our gifts, talents, and professional
goals. I know many of you very much value the service that I and other
human potential and personal growth counselors in private practice
contribute to the community. Your support at this time, writing to your
legislators and/or coming to Olympia to testify before Health
Committees, could be most important key to creating a real win for all
concerned.

Your personal expression of support and how you see my and other
non-licensed counselor's work as valuable is the most important thing
you can tell your legislators. They need to hear from real people about
why this matters to you and about what you would lose if we were no
longer able to practice and the kind of personal growth work we offer
were no longer available. And, if you are outside Washington state but
have credentials that might impress our legislators with your expertise
on this matter, please pull out all the stops and let them know your
opinion. We can so use every bit of support we can get. I'll outline
some of the major talking points below. Use what feels comfortable to
you - there's no need to try and mention everything in one letter.

I will also include the link to finding your legislators' contact
information. It would help me a great deal to get copies of any letters
you send, and please do let me know if you might be available to testify
in the next couple of weeks. We need to pack the Committee hearings
with as many supporters as we can and we have very little time to get
the word out. If you can pass this along to others in your community,
that would be enormously helpful as well. Thank you so much for your
support!

In gratitude,
Miriam

Miriam Dyak, President, Washington Professional Counselors Association
<miriam@... <mailto:miriam@...> >


How to contact your legislators:
Directions for contacting your legislators can be found at
<http://leg.wa.gov/legislature/ <http://leg.wa.gov/legislature/> > -
click on "Find your district," enter you address, and then click on the
individual legislators for their contact information. E-mailing
legislators is just fine, but please write something (even something
very short) so that there is a record of your opinion. If you are an
"out of state expert," write to the chairwomen of the Health Committees
- Senator Karen Keiser and Representative Eileen Cody. Also, so that we
can have a sense of how we are doing in this effort, please send e-mail
copies of the letters you write to <miriam@...
<mailto:miriam@...> >. Thank you so much!

Talking points:

* Ask your representatives to oppose HB 1494 and your senator to
oppose SB 5579 * Tell them why you care about this issue. If you
have worked with a registered counselor, why was that important to you?
If you think it's important to be able to choose to work on personal
growth, develop creative responses to normal life stress, enhance
wellbeing, develop resilience, learn new life skills, and embark on a
journey of self-reflection, self-knowledge, and self-discovery, please
let your legislator know. You might want to emphasize that these are
all goals that are pursued by normal, healthy, high functioning people -
for example, you don't need to be sick or depressed or in need of
medication in order to want to learn new ways of communication, improve
your decision making abilities, or be interested in your dreams. *
If you are a counselor or health care professional (registered or
licensed), inform them of your credentials and the work you do, and let
them know your professional support of your colleagues. (Also, many
registered counselors don't even know about this legislation - if you
know people who may be affected, please let them know what is
happening.) * Point out that you are concerned about the reports of
abuse of clients by registered counselors, but the proposed legislation
is targeting the wrong people. This proposed legislation completely
ignores what has been the most serious problem with the registered
counselor status, that of untrained, unskilled people who register as
counselors and get jobs in agencies. Last April 24 The Seattle Times
published an exposé on abuse of clients by registered counselors.
All but one of the cases cited in the article were registered counselors
without training who worked in agencies. Unfortunately the proposed
legislation does nothing to remedy this situation. In fact, it allows
this abuse to continue. And there has been no demonstration or
documentation that the 7,000 private practice counselors who would be
put out of business by this proposed legislation are in any way abusing
clients or that they are likely to do so in the future. * Registered
counselors in private practice were not included in the process of
creating this proposed legislation. No RC's in private practice were
included on the Department of Health Task Force that met last summer.
The Task force was comprised of licensed mental health professionals,
agency employees, 2 legislators, and Department of Health
representatives. RC's were actively discouraged from attending the
meetings and those of us who did were allowed only 1 minute each to
speak during a 15 minute period at the end of each 3 hour session. We
care deeply about our profession and want to work with the Legislature,
the Department of Health, and the Governor in creating real solutions to
real problems. We feel we could be the best allies in creating a
positive outcome to these problems, but so far we have been excluded
from the process. * Suggest that the best solution is to table the
bill for this session in order to allow time for the Washington
Professional Counselors Association (WAPROCA), a new organization of
human potential and personal growth counselors in private practice, to
work with the legislature and the Department of Health in crafting
legislation that will actually create solutions both to protect
Washington citizens and allow us to choose the kind of counseling we
want and need. WAPROCA is working to create a new category of non
licensed counselors, "human potential and personal growth counselors,"
that will meet a much higher standard of ethics training and continuing
education.
You may contact Miriam at http://www.thevoicedialogueinstitute.org
<http://www.thevoicedialogueinstitute.org206-932-1151> -
206-932-1151Thank you for taking your valuable time to read this
information. Once again, I highly encourage all Hypnotists and
Hypnotherapists in the State of Washingtonto sign up for the Union. Here
is their website: http://www.ngh.net/hypnosis/legislation1.html
<http://www.ngh.net/hypnosis/legislation1.html> We look forward to
seeing you on Friday. Regards, Laurie Finkelstein, CHPresident,
NGHWA425-881-7082LaurieF@...
<mailto:LaurieF@...>


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