Case library / What happens after discipline
Eight weeks without a therapist, and a year added to probation
In short
Probation revoked, the revocation stayed, and the original four-year term extended by one additional year from August 24
Probation extendedThe gap opened when her own Board-approved therapist became unavailable, and the Board counted it as a violation anyway.
It shows that probation is usually lost to administrative slippage rather than clinical misconduct, and that the slippage costs real time.
What happened
The respondent applied for an Associate Clinical Social Worker registration in August 2019. The Board denied the application in November 2019 because of an October 1, 2014 conviction on one interlineated felony count of Penal Code section 487(a), grand theft. The conduct behind it ran from June 6, 2008 to December 2, 2010, while she worked as a library media assistant and librarian for a school district: she requisitioned and misdirected district textbooks for her own financial gain and took kickbacks from a district-authorized vendor. The court sentenced her to 365 days in jail, three years of criminal probation, 100 hours of community service, and $14,214.00 in victim restitution. In June 2017 the court reduced the felony to a misdemeanor under Penal Code section 17(b)(3) and entered a civil judgment for the $15,298.40 of restitution still owed.
She settled the resulting Statement of Issues. Effective July 9, 2020, the registration was issued and immediately revoked, the revocation was stayed, and she was placed on four years of probation. The conditions included a psychological or psychiatric evaluation, ongoing psychotherapy with a Board-approved California-licensed therapist who filed quarterly reports on her fitness to practice, a graduate-level law and ethics course, quarterly reports under penalty of perjury, and $1,200 a year toward the cost of monitoring her probation.
Three things went wrong. Her approved therapist held their last session on December 15, 2020 and then became unavailable; she did not submit a replacement therapist for the Board’s approval until February 11, 2021, missing eight weeks of the required weekly sessions. After the Board reduced the requirement to once a month in September 2021, her quarterly reports showed no session at all in March 2022, which she attributed to scheduling conflicts, and none in May 2022.
She also stopped practicing on June 1, 2022 and returned to work on July 18, 2022, but did not tell the Board until August 30, 2022. Condition 8 required written notice 30 calendar days before a period of non-practice begins and before the return. The non-practice pushed her projected probation end date from July 9, 2024 to August 24, 2024. Separately, $1,200 in probation monitoring costs due no later than August 24, 2022 was not paid until March 27, 2023.
The Board filed a Petition to Revoke Probation in April 2023. She filed a notice of defense contesting it, represented herself, and then settled, admitting the truth of every charge and allegation.
What it was charged as
The Board keeps jurisdiction to investigate and discipline even after a license or registration expires, is canceled, or is voluntarily surrendered.
Ongoing psychotherapy with a Board-approved California-licensed therapist who has no prior relationship with the registrant, at least weekly unless the Board says otherwise, with quarterly written reports from the therapist to the Board.
Written notice to the Board 30 calendar days before any period of non-practice longer than 30 days and before returning; the time does not count toward the probation term.
$1,200 a year toward what it costs the Board to monitor the probation, for the whole probation period.
The original ground for denial: a board may deny an application because the applicant was convicted of a crime substantially related to the profession.
Conviction of a substantially related crime is unprofessional conduct for a clinical social worker applicant, registrant, or licensee.
A crime is substantially related if to a substantial degree it evidences present or potential unfitness to practice consistent with public health, safety, or welfare.
The outcome
Probation revoked, the revocation stayed, and the original four-year term extended by one additional year from August 24, 2024, to run consecutively with the probation already in effect. All original terms and conditions remained in force.
OAH No. 2023050773
No cost recovery stated in the orderWhat the rule actually says
A disciplinary probation is a set of dated obligations that run on their own clock, and each one is separately enforceable. Ongoing psychotherapy means a therapist the Board has approved in advance, at the frequency the Board sets, filing quarterly reports; a break in that arrangement is the registrant’s problem to fix, not the therapist’s. Non-practice conditions require written notice before the gap starts, which means a leave, a layoff, or a wait between jobs has to be reported ahead of time, and the gap does not shorten the probation. Monitoring fees are due on the dates in the order. Violating any of these lets the Board set aside the stay and impose the revocation that was held in reserve, and it can extend the term instead.
Discussion
Analysis, not part of the decision
None of the three violations involved a client. One was a gap in her own therapy that opened when her therapist became unavailable, one was late paperwork about a job change, one was a late payment. That is the ordinary shape of a probation violation. The Board is not asking whether the registrant is a danger; it is asking whether the monitoring arrangement is working, and monitoring only works if every piece of it arrives on time.
The psychotherapy condition is worth reading closely, because the burden it creates is one-sided. The registrant has to find a licensed therapist with no prior business, professional, or personal relationship with her, who is not her supervisor, who is willing to write quarterly reports to a licensing board about her fitness to practice, and who has to be approved before the first session. When that person becomes unavailable, the clock keeps running. Eight weeks passed between the last session and the replacement proposal, and the Board treated the whole gap as non-compliance. The condition also served two purposes at once — treatment and surveillance — and the second purpose is why a missed month counted even after the Board itself had relaxed the frequency to monthly.
The non-practice condition catches people whose work is unstable. Notice is due 30 days before the gap, which means you have to predict it. She stopped on June 1, went back on July 18, and told the Board on August 30. The consequence was not just the violation: the seven weeks did not count toward her probation, so the end date had already moved from July 9, 2024 to August 24, 2024 before the petition was even filed.
The disposition is the part to notice. The Board had the power to lift the stay and revoke the registration outright, which is what the petition asked for. Instead it revoked probation, stayed that revocation too, and added a consecutive year. A registrant who has slipped on compliance is not automatically finished; but the term grew from four years to five, and every condition, including the monthly therapy and the annual fee, ran for the extra year as well.
Where insurance reaches, and where it does not
Nothing here is an insurable loss. A professional liability policy pays for claims arising from professional services, and it excludes intentional acts, criminal acts, and fraud — the theft conviction that started this file would have been excluded outright. What most policies do include is license-defense or disciplinary-proceedings expense coverage, a separate limit that pays counsel to represent you in a Board investigation, an accusation, or a petition to revoke probation. That coverage is worth having and worth using early, but no policy pays your probation monitoring fees, your court-ordered therapy, or the year the Board adds to your term.
What would have changed it
- If a Board-approved therapist or supervisor becomes unavailable, submit a replacement for approval that week; the requirement does not pause while you look for someone new.
- Send the written non-practice notice 30 days before you stop working, not after you come back, and treat parental leave, a layoff, and a gap between jobs as non-practice.
- On the day a decision takes effect, calendar every report date, payment date, and course deadline in it, and keep documentary proof that you met each one.
Questions
For a law and ethics seminar, or for yourself
- Condition 2 made the respondent responsible for keeping an approved therapist in place, but the therapist’s availability was outside her control. Where should a licensing board place that risk, and how would you redraft the condition so it still protects the public?
- The Board reduced the therapy requirement from weekly to monthly and then treated two missed months as grounds to revoke. What purpose is the psychotherapy condition serving at that point, and can a single condition honestly serve both treatment and surveillance?
- The conduct underlying the original discipline was theft from a school district employer, with no clinical component and no client involved. Build the strongest case that four years of monitored practice was proportionate, and then the strongest case that it was not.
Source. This write-up is drawn from the signed public decision in the case number above. Names, cities and employers have been removed — why. To pull the original, open the Board's quarterly newsletter archive, find the issue covering September 28, 2023, and match the case number in the Formal Disciplinary Actions section. Not legal advice.
