NASWVA Policy
and Legislative Updates
Are you a Virginia social worker looking for opportunities to advocate and engage in social and political action? Do you want to ensure that all people have equal access to the resources, employment, services, and opportunities that they require to meet their basic human needs and to develop fully?
Then join social workers across Virginia to make your voice heard on issues related to the social work profession, priority social justice problems, and mental health and other challenges faced by your clients! Below are frequently asked questions, resource links, and a list of bills and resolutions included in the chapter’s advocacy strategy for the 2024 General Assembly.
​What does NASW Virginia Chapter do to influence state policy and regulations?
Advocacy on professional practices and social justice has been core to the mission of NASW and its Virginia Chapter since its inception. The chapter monitors bills; communicates chapter stances to legislators; educates elected officials on behavioral health and social justice issues; helps craft or influence bill/resolution language; and alerts and activates social workers and chapter members and students about when and how to use their power as knowledgeable constituents to influence legislative and regulatory outcomes.
The chapter also is deeply involved in or collaborates with numerous Virginia coalitions and organizations or partners, since rarely is genuine policy progress made by advocating alone. These coalitions include the following:
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Compassionate Choices
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Solitary Confinement Coalition
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Voices for Virginia’s Children
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National Association of Mental Illness
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Poverty Law Center
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Equality Virginia
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ACLU Virginia
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What is the chapter doing now on advocacy?
The Virginia General Assembly is in its winter 2024 session, but it’s a short, busy session with only 60 days to propose, vet, vote, and get governor sign-off on hundreds of bills. In preparation, NASWVA Chapter staff have been working with the chapter’s Policy and Social Justice Committee and board of directors to identify priority bills and issues; establish an advocacy strategy; educate legislators, especially newly elected leaders; monitor the status of bills and resolutions; and activate members to make their voices heard via action alerts as needed.
In 2024, the chapter is focused on the following issues:
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Social work license mobility via a Interstate Social Work Compact
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Establishment of a Social Work Advisory Board to advance the profession and advise the governor
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Potential social work licensure exam alternatives
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Other social work licensure issues
Social workers: Bookmark this page, so you can check this website often for updates!
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​​Volunteer for the NASWVA Policy and Social Justice Committee​
You're invited! If you are an NASW Virginia member, the chapter would love to welcome you to its Policy and Social Justice Committee! You'll share your expertise and ideas on the policy priorities important to the social work profession in Virginia, as well as work on social justice issues affecting you and your clients. Students and retirees are welcome, too!
We need your in-the-trenches perspectives to help us craft the chapter's policy strategy to advance and protect social work and human rights issues such as parity, reproductive justice and abortion rights, gun safety, affordable housing, student debt, higher wages, and more. Email Executive Director Debra Riggs at driggs.naswva@socialworkers.org for more information.
NASWVA Policy Focus and Bill Status as of April 17, 2024
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Social Work Profession
Passed and Signed: VICTORY! HB 326 and SB239: VICTORY! This bill authorizes Virginia to become a signatory to the Social Work Licensure Compact. The Compact allows social workers who have or are eligible for an active, unencumbered license in the compact member state where they reside to apply for a multistate license. Effective July 1, 2024. Identical to SB239.
Continued to 2025: HB 178 This bill would establish the Social Work Advisory Board to advise the Governor on efforts to improve the social work profession in the Commonwealth.
Passed and enacted: SB 403-This bill adds behavioral health technicians and behavioral health technician assistants to the professions governed by the Board of Counseling. The bill also establishes qualification, scope of practice, and supervision requirements for qualified mental health professionals and qualified mental health professional trainees.
Passed and enacted: HB 168 Homeless students, Department of Education; resource document on supports and services for homeless students. Requires the Department of Education to develop and make available to each school board a resource document containing guidance and best practices for providing the necessary supports and services to homeless students, including guidance and best practices relating to (i) decisions regarding whether and when such a student should remain enrolled in a school in a previous school division of residence, (ii) wrap-around supports and services for such students that include the parents when they are available and specific wrap-around supports and services for such students who may have experienced additional trauma prior to becoming homeless, and (iii) any other means by which such students can be best served and protected, particularly those homeless children and youths who are at risk of becoming victims of human trafficking.
Continued to 2025: SB 682 This bill requires health regulatory boards within the Department of Health Professions to recognize licenses or certifications issued by other U.S. jurisdictions, as defined in the bill, as fulfillment for licensure or certification in the Commonwealth if certain conditions are met.
Mental Health
Vetoed: HB81 Suicide; Abolishes the common-law crime of suicide.
Passed: HB603 Public elementary and secondary schools; health instruction, certain topics relating to mental health. Requires health instruction provided to elementary and secondary school students to include certain topics relating to mental health that are enumerated in the bill, including (i) general themes of social and life skills, including self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making, relationship skills, and social awareness; (ii) signs and symptoms of common mental health challenges; and (iii) mental health wellness and healthy strategies for coping with stress and negative feelings, including conflict resolution skills. Governor's amendment approved: https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?241+amd+HB603AG
Voting Rights
Vetoed: HB26 Voter identification; accepted forms of identification, private entities licensed or certified. Adds to the list of accepted forms of identification for purposes of voting a valid identification card that contains a photograph of the voter and is issued by any private entity that is licensed or certified, in whole or in part, by the Department of Health, Department of Social Services, Department of Medical Assistance Services, or Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.
Amended: SB196 Voter registration; list maintenance data standards, challenges to a voter's registration. Prohibits the use of voter data received from another state or jurisdiction or through a list comparison for list maintenance purposes when the data file does not include a unique identifier for each individual whose information is contained in the data file. The bill requires the Department of Elections to conduct an annual review of all sources of data utilized for list maintenance activities in the preceding 12-month period for the purpose of determining the validity, completeness, accuracy, and reliability of the data received from each source and to include the results of such review in its annual report to the House and Senate Committees on Privileges and Elections regarding its list maintenance activities. Lastly, the bill removes provisions allowing general registrars to adjudicate challenges to a voter's registration, reserving such process to the courts. The bill includes technical amendments.
Gun Violence and Safety
Youngkin vetoed 30 gun safety bills, signed four, and amended six.
Read NASW Virginia’s April 16, 2024, statement on the mental harm caused to both direct victims and community members due to gun violence. This is a response to emergency tactics taken after eight shootings in Richmond in a two-week period.
Solitary Confinement ("Restorative Housing")
Vetoed: SB719 Restorative housing and isolated confinement; restrictions on use. Prohibited the use of isolated confinement in state correctional facilities, subject to certain exceptions. The bill would have required that before placing an incarcerated person in restorative housing or isolated confinement for his own protection, the facility administrator would place an incarcerated person in a less-restrictive setting, including by transferring such person to another institution or to a special-purpose housing unit for incarcerated persons who face similar threats. The bill would have required that such people be reviewed every 48 hours, and the facility administrator would ensure that the incarcerated person received a medical and mental health evaluation from certified medical and mental health professionals within one working day of placement in restorative housing or any form of isolated confinement.
The bill also required the facility administrator to notify the regional administrator in writing that an incarcerated person was placed in restorative housing or isolated confinement within 24 hours of such placement. Finally, the bill required that formal reviews of an incarcerated person's placement in any form of isolated confinement shall be held in such person's presence, inform him of any reason or reasons administrative officials believe isolated confinement remains necessary, and give the incarcerated person an opportunity to respond to those reasons, and a formal ruling shall be provided to the incarcerated individual within 24 hours.
Reproductive Justice/Abortion Rights
Vetoed: HB 609 Contraception; establishes right to obtain, applicability, enforcement. Establishes a right to obtain contraceptives and engage in contraception, as defined in the bill. The bill created a cause of action that would have been instituted against anyone who infringed on such right. (SB 237).
Human Rights/ Discrimination
Passed and enacted: VICTORY! HB174 Marriage lawful regardless of sex, gender, or race of parties. A victory for longtime gay marriage advocates such as NASW Virginia and NASW.
Passed and enacted: SB07 Adds ethnicity to hate crimes definition. Hate crimes and discrimination; ethnic animosity, penalties. Safeguards all individuals within the Commonwealth from unlawful discrimination in employment and in places of public accommodation because of such individual's ethnic origin and prohibits such discrimination. The law also adds victims who are intentionally selected because of their ethnic origin to the categories of victims whose intentional selection for a hate crime involving assault, assault and battery, or trespass for the purpose of damaging another's property results in a higher criminal penalty for the offense. The law provides that no provider or user of an interactive computer service on the Internet shall be liable for any action voluntarily taken by it in good faith to restrict access to material that the provider or user considers to be intended to incite hatred on the basis of ethnic origin.
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Passed and enacted: HB633 Forced labor or service (labor trafficking); civil action for trafficking, penalties. Expands the offense of abduction to penalize any person who, by force, intimidation or deception, and without legal justification or excuse, obtains the labor or services of another, or seizes, takes, transports, detains or secretes another person or threatens to do so. The lawl also expands the offense of receiving money for procuring a person to penalize any person who causes another to engage in forced labor or services or provides or obtains labor or services by any act as described in the offense of abduction. Lastly, the law allows any person injured as a result of an abduction for the purposes of forced labor or services to commence a civil action for recovery of compensatory damages, punitive damages, and reasonable attorney fees and costs.
NASWVA Comment: Virginia had been the only state that did not classified labor trafficking as an enforceable state law. All prosecution of Virginia cases had been conducted through the federal system. This bill achieves what the governor calls a “signature goal” and complements establishment of a commission to recommend tactics for preventing human trafficking in the state.
Where can I find information about Virginia bills and learn more?
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Access Virginia’s Legislative Information System: Overview of the 2024 General Assembly legislative and resolution activity with links to committees and other sources.
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Track issues and progress at LegiScan.
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Find Virginia General Assembly Bills and Resolutions.
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Read bill summaries here.
Learn you can advocate on Virginia social justice and professional issues!