ALGBTIC Competencies for Counseling LGBQQIA Individuals

I am writing to you with excellent news! The Assoc. of LGBT Issues in Counseling (ALGBTIC) Board just approved the ALGBTIC Competencies for Counseling Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Ally Individuals! The taskforce to create these competencies has been working for the past three years to update the ALGBTIC LGBT Competencies, and our work has finally come to a close.

As co-chairs of this taskforce, we want to officially thank the other authors of the competencies: Margarita Martinez, Amanda Brace, Hugh Crethar, Bob Loos, Brandon Harper, Stephanie Graham, Anneliese Singh, Michael Kocet, Linda Travis, and Serena Lambert. I also want to thank our outside reviewers: Theodore Burnes, lore dickey, and Tonya Hammer and the ALGBTIC Board members for their work in reviewing this document.

We hope counselors, advocates and educators will find these competencies to be a highly useful tool in working with and training others to work with LGBQQIA Individuals. You can access them on the Resources tab of our recently refurbished ALGBTIC website (www.algbtic.org

 

). We have kept the original competencies up for those who would like to use or see them for historical purposes. You can also utilize this link here:

http://www.algbtic.org/images/stories/ALGBTIC_Comps_for_Counseling_LGBQQIA_Individuals_Final.pdf

The intention is that these competencies and the Competencies for Counseling Transgender Individuals (also available on the ALGBTIC website) will replace, expand upon, and updated the previous competencies. We feel that these original competencies were a hugely important contribution to our field, and we want to thank the original authors for the hard work they put in creating the first set of competencies. They created the base for the work that has been done in the two sets of updated competencies.

The newest competencies, the ALGBTIC Competencies for Counseling LGBQQIA Individuals, expands upon the previous competencies in a couple of ways. These competencies have sought to bring to light current concerns and issues, integrate current literature and research findings, provide a more in-depth look at the concerns of identities covered in the original competencies, and expand to also include Queer, Questioning, Intersex and Ally individuals. We hope counselors, advocates and educators will be as excited to read this document as our taskforce was in creating this addition to LGBTQQIA counseling literature. In a time when LGBTQQIA counseling issues are discussed so passionately we hope this new piece of literature will help advocate, inform and create more allies in the classroom, administration and of course counseling room!

Thank you, 

Amney Harper and Pete Finnerty