Florida Certification Board

Recognize risk factors, warning signs, and protective factors for suicide and violence

Ask directly about method, means, and access and escalate immediately

Understand Florida's Baker Act, Marchman Act, and crisis services

Learners will describe grief as a normal response to loss and explain current models of grieving, including Worden's tasks, the dual process model, and continuing bonds.

Learners will recognize anticipatory, ambiguous, disenfranchised, secondary, and traumatic losses and respond with validation and practical support.

Learners will identify signs that grief may need clinical attention, including Prolonged Grief Disorder features and suicide risk, and route these concerns to licensed clinicians.

Screen every client for both mental health and substance use concerns

Build symptom and substance timelines for licensed clinicians

Engage ambivalent clients using stages of change and motivational skills

Distinguish screening, assessment, and diagnosis within the CMHP scope

Administer and score the PHQ-9, GAD-7, PC-PTSD-5, PCL-5, and AUDIT-C accurately

Respond immediately to positive suicide risk screens under agency protocol

Organize assessment data across biological, psychological, and social domains

Conduct structured interviews with informed consent and clear confidentiality limits

Apply trauma-informed and culturally responsive questioning

Learners will distinguish visions, goals, objectives, and interventions and connect each level of a service plan to the person's own intentions.

Learners will write SMART objectives that name an observable behavior, a measurable amount, the conditions, and a target date.

Learners will track progress with simple, person-friendly measures and write progress notes that link directly to plan objectives.

Learners will trace the history of person-centered care from Rogers's core conditions to SAMHSA's working definition of recovery and the CHIME framework.

Learners will practice a structured listening cycle and recovery-oriented language that keep the person, not the diagnosis, at the center of every contact.

Learners will apply shared decision-making, cultural humility, and trauma-informed principles within the limits of the CMHP role.

Organize assessment information using the four Ps framework

Understand the continuum of care, ASAM Criteria, and LOCUS

Support shared decision-making in the least restrictive safe setting

Learners will reframe "noncompliance" as barriers to be understood and use a recognized framework to organize predisposing, enabling, and need factors.

Learners will screen for practical and social barriers such as transportation, cost, housing, food, and documentation, and link people to resources.

Learners will explore attitudinal, stigma-related, symptom-related, and co-occurring barriers with respectful, motivational questions.

Practitioners understand the legal standards of vicarious liability and professional liability insurance required to mitigate administrative risks in addiction treatment.

Administrators implement compliant marketing campaigns and transparent fee structures that prevent financial exploitation and predatory referral practices.

Leaders manage counselor impairment and workforce burnout by implementing organizational resilience strategies and Employee Assistance Programs.

Clinical supervisors establish trauma-responsive practices to support client emotional regulation and safety.

Supervisors implement standardized somatic grounding techniques to prevent clinical re-traumatization during crisis.

Administrators audit treatment records to verify compliance with state licensing and ethical standards.

Practitioners analyze neurobiological and pharmacological evidence to support medication adherence.

Supervisors implement structured continuing care protocols that integrate medication-assisted treatment.

Administrators evaluate agency policies to dismantle antimedication bias and support compliance.