THE MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS: It is not a secret anymore! The state of New Jersey and our country are in a mental health crisis. Reports of depression, anxiety, suicide, and self-harm are rising steadily across all walks of life, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The shortage of mental health professionals, especially licensed social workers is painfully obvious as consumers experience extended wait times for consultation, evaluation and treatment. Mental health agencies, hospitals, and private practices are struggling to staff programs as they face rising caseloads, burnout and repeated turnover in the state of New Jersey. To be sure, the needs of the consumers, as well as qualified social workers are not being met. 

THE PROBLEM: The current version New Jersey Board of Social Work Examiners is clearly contributing to the shortage of qualified social workers being licensed, and allowed to practice in the field. This Board currently employs Edie Nugent as executive director and Jose Murado as a "government representative". Under her management and direction, the process of licensing qualified social work professionals has bottle-necked in the most egregious manner. There are countless, countless stories about her, and her staff not communicating licensing requests in a comprehensive manner (piecemealing the process), losing submitted documents, being completely unresponsive to reasonable requests for weeks/months, making unreasonable demands on LCSW candidates to obtain case files that openly expose the consumer and are almost impossible to obtain in most cases, as well as not being accountable to the consumer/candidate throughout the process. The complaints are rampant and come from LSW candidates, LCSW candidates, as well as those who are seeking reciprocity of an LCSW license from another state. The feeling of helplessness is real and overwhelming!

The incompetence of Edie Nugent and her staff is apparent.

A VOTE OF "NO CONFIDENCE" IS WARRANTED: We are a not only a community of social workers and professionals, but we are also a community of consumers as well. The continued mishandling of "our" New Jersey Board of Social Work Examiners will continue to contribute to the growing shortage of social work clinicians who are literally applying, and working in other states such as NY, CT, and PA because of the overly stringent, opaque requirements and practices of this version of the Board. In the end, it is the mental health consumers that loses. This includes our children, our elderly, and our most vulnerable populations. We are needed in the state of New Jersey and are qualified to do this very difficult labor of love. We should not have to deal with this level of scrutiny. It appears punitive and almost insulting to the profession. 

In conclusion, signing this petition will assist us in gaining our voice in this process. There needs to be an investigation into the practices of this version of the New Jersey Board of Social Work Examiners with Edie Nugent as its executive director. Our plan is to present our petition to the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs who oversees the New Jersey Board of Social Work Examiners. Please note that this petition is open to anyone for the VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE. It is also open to be amended. Please write to mredwards.lmsw@gmail.com 

We are not only JERSEY STRONG, but we are also SOCIAL WORK STRONG!!!