Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Georgia has become the fifth state to offer a streamlined licensing process for professional counselors.

Georgia joined Arizona, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Ohio in offering the Counseling Compact, a multistate agreement that grants licensed professional counselors’ reciprocity, allowing them to easily obtain their license when they move to a new state involved in the compact.

“We are proud to join this multistate coalition to remove red tape for our licensed professional counselors,” said Secretary Raffensperger. “This allows new Georgians to get to work faster.”

Georgia currently has 12,175 active professional counselor licenses.

If you are currently licensed in Georgia as a Licensed Professional Counselor (Associate Professional Counselors are not eligible for compact privileges) who have an active, unencumbered license and seek to obtain compact privileges, you must first submit an amendment application through your GOALS licensure account. Upon processing and approval of the amendment application, eligible licensees may then apply for compact privileges through CompactConnect. Eligibility files will be pulled and transmitted every Monday to CompactConnect.

As additional states implement the issuance of compact privileges, licensees in Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Ohio will gain the opportunity to apply for privileges within those jurisdictions.

For more details regarding the Counseling Compact and its implementation timeline, please visit counselingcompact.gov.