Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation (IDFPR) renewal requirements for the current 2021–2023 licensure cycle increased with the addition of new training requirements (implicit bias awareness, mandated reporter with a section on implicit bias, and Alzheimer's disease and other dementias) in addition to the previous requirements (ethics and cultural competency). Due to the potential overlap in training topics, it's possible that a CEU course may appear to cover topics applicable to two specialty CEU requirements, such as cultural competency and ethics; or a training on mandated reporter with implicit bias might appear to fulfill the implicit bias training requirement. As such, members have been asking the chapter: Can you use one course to fulfill more than one specialty CEU requirement?
The answer, unfortunately, is no. If you take a course that fulfills one specialty requirement, you will have to take another course to fulfill the other specialty requirements. That is, if you take a course like our recorded NASW-IL training, "Interrupting Bias: A Mandated Reporter’s Responsibility to Act," the course will fulfill IDFPR requirements for a mandated reporter training with implicit bias section but you cannot use it to also fulfill implicit bias awareness requirements—you will still need to take an additional training that covers a minimum of one hour on implicit bias awareness. The same can be said of a course that may appear to cover ethics and cultural competency topics at the same time—CEUs from such a course can only be used to fulfill either an ethics requirement OR the cultural competency requirement, not both.
If you take a live training with the NASW-Illinois Chapter or a recorded chapter training through the Social Work Online CE Institute, our course descriptions and certificates will clearly state whether a course will fulfill IDFPR specialty CE requirements. If you're unsure if a non–NASW-Illinois Chapter training fulfills a specialty requirement, you will need to review administrative rules and the law creating the requirement to verify compliance. Your CEU provider should be able to tell you this information and confirm if their course qualifies.
Have More Questions? All specific questions concerning licensure and individual licenses or a particular license application needs to be properly directed to IDFPR as they are ultimately the licensing board who approve of licenses for Illinois. The NASW-Illinois Chapter website also has a plethora of information relating to licensure, from supervision requirements, the licensing process, testing procedures, and more. Go to the NASW-IL Licensure page to read more.
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