Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In the United States, the regulation of professional practice is largely left to the individual state. While federal laws may influence these policies, it is the relevant state laws, statutes, or rules that govern day to day practice. One such regulated profession is social work. There are nearly 650,000 social workers in the United States that provide critical services to individuals, communities, and families. Social workers practice in each state, under the laws of the respective state. As such, the regulation of social work practice, namely via licensing and/or registration, varies from state to state. Given that the primary goal of licensure and regulation of practice is to protect the public from unqualified practitioners, states may, typically through a professional board, sanction social work practitioners who violate rules. The Medicare and Medicaid Patient and Program Protection Act of 1987 mandates that states report sanctioned practitioners to the federal government through the United States Department of Health and Human Services and the National Practitioner Data Bank. Existing studies suggest that variances in state sanctioning patters for clinical social workers are influenced by policy differences at the state level. This study attempts to fill this gap in the literature by examining socioeconomic (population, per capita income), political (political culture, policy liberalism, interparty competition), and regulatory (licensure requirements) differences that may influence state sanctioning patterns. Preliminary results will be reported as will potential applications of this study to other regulated professions.