Delay in counselling therapist regulation hindering access for Indigenous people in Alberta

Mental health professionals say the Alberta government's delay in creating a new professional college for counselling therapists is creating financial and logistical barriers for Indigenous people seeking help. 

Indigenous people can't receive coverage under the First Nations and Inuit Non-Insured Health Benefits (NIHB) plan for sessions with Alberta counselling therapists because the federal program only covers fees for practitioners that are regulated by a professional college.

Counselling therapists in Alberta are not regulated. Alberta's United Conservative government could change that by proclaiming a regulation but has delayed doing so, previously stating it was not a priority.

Leigh Sheldon, CEO of Indigenous Psychological Services and a member of the Swan River First Nation near Slave Lake, said creating the proposed College of Counselling Therapy of Alberta (CCTA) would increase the pool of practitioners who could become eligible providers under NIHB. 

"It would change so much because we have a lot of clients who need to get in and there's not enough providers," Sheldon said in an interview. 

"To become a provider is such a huge barrier, that if a counsellor or a mental health therapist or even a provisional [psychologist] that can get on that list, it would really support our people in need."

Shaheen Alarakhia, owner of Holistic Healing Counselling in Edmonton, has had to turn people away. Although she is designated a Canadian Certified Counsellor, NIHB won't pay for her services because she doesn't belong to a professional college. 

Alarakhia recalls an Indigenous woman who was disappointed to learn Alarakhia's services weren't covered under NIHB.

"She shared with me that I was the sixth person that she called, that she had been wanting to work on some of the trauma that she has gone through," Alarakhia said. 

"I'm competent to do the things that she wanted to work on but I couldn't be the one to help her."

Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia have professional colleges to oversee the work of counselling therapists and psychotherapists. Regulation of professions is a provincial responsibility.

Indigenous Services Canada administers the NIHB. A department spokesperson confirmed counselling therapists and psychotherapists in those five provinces are eligible providers under the plan, which provides 22 hours of counselling each year to Indigenous people or more if required on a case-by-case basis. 

"If counselling therapists in Alberta were to come to be regulated by a legislated regulatory body, as they have in some other provinces, this category of licensed professionals would meet the eligibility criteria for the NIHB Program, once they are eligible for independent, unsupervised practice," spokesperson Matthew Gutsch said in an email.

The nearly two-decade push to regulate counselling therapists and protect vulnerable clients from unethical and untrained practitioners is close to the finish line.