Washington CE Requirements for LMHCs, LMFTs, LICSWs, and Associates
Updated August 2026
This page is informational and reflects the rules as of August 2026. It is not legal advice and it is not a substitute for the Washington Department of Health. Verify your own requirements with DOH and your credential's rules before you renew.
Washington fully licensed mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, advanced social workers, and independent clinical social workers must complete 32 hours of continuing education every two years. That figure changed from 36 hours effective October 1, 2025. Associates in all of those categories must complete 16 hours every year, reduced from 18 in the same rulemaking. Licenses renew annually on your birthday. These requirements sit in WAC 246-809-600 through 246-809-650.
If you have read that Washington requires 36 hours, that number is out of date
Until October 1, 2025, Washington did require 36 hours of continuing education every two years for renewal. The Department of Health amended WAC 246-809-630 under rule-making order WSR 25-11-019, and the requirement dropped to 32 hours effective October 1, 2025. The same rulemaking reduced the associate requirement from 18 hours a year to 16.
Several large national CE provider sites still publish 36 hours as the renewal figure. They are quoting the superseded version of the rule.
The number also persists for a second reason. Thirty-six hours, including six in professional law and ethics, is still what an applicant must complete before the Department of Health issues a full license. That is an entry requirement, completed after the academic requirements and before licensure, and all three Department of Health profession pages state it unchanged as of August 2026.
So both numbers are real, and they describe different things. Renewal is 32 hours every two years. Initial licensure is 36 hours. If you have been budgeting your renewal CE against 36 hours, you have been overbuying by four hours a cycle. Check your own count against WAC 246-809-630 rather than against any provider's summary, including this one.
What you need, and where to get it
Every specialty requirement below counts toward your total, so the 6 ethics hours, the 2 roles and boundaries hours, the 2 health equity hours, and the 6 suicide hours are part of your 32, not additions to it. Where Lovewell offers a training that meets a requirement, it is named. Where we do not, the chart says so.
Fully licensed: LMHC, LMFT, LASW, LICSW
32 hours every two years, renewing annually on your birthday. WAC 246-809-630.
Becoming an approved supervisor in Washington is a separate matter from renewal. Under WAC 246-809, it takes 15 hours of clinical supervision training plus 25 hours of supervised experience earned on the job. Lovewell's Becoming an Approved Supervisor provides the 15-hour training requirement, and its hours also count toward the renewal categories above.
Associates: LMHCA, LMFTA, LSWAA, LSWAIC
16 hours every year. WAC 246-809-632. Ethics, roles and boundaries, and health equity hours count toward the annual total in the year you complete them.
Retired active licensees complete 18 hours every two years, including 6 in professional ethics and law, under WAC 246-809-730.
The roles and boundaries requirement, since it is the one people get wrong
Professional roles and boundaries is 2 hours every two years, and those hours cannot double as your ethics and law hours. They are counted separately. A single course can carry ethics-related content and still be a roles and boundaries course, but the hours you claim for one requirement are not available for the other. A training that covers both, like the supervisor intensive, teaches them in separate blocks and reports the hours separately.
Online and self-paced CE is fully allowed
Washington removed its cap on distance learning. Online continuing education counts, synchronous or asynchronous, under WAC 246-809-610. Asynchronous programs must include a test of comprehension at the end. Synchronous programs do not.
Nobody is DOH-approved, and that is worth understanding
The Washington Department of Health states plainly that it does not approve continuing education for licensed mental health counselors, licensed marriage and family therapists, or licensed social workers. Any provider advertising itself as DOH-approved is describing something that does not exist. What the rule requires instead is that courses meet the standards in WAC 246-809-610 and that the instructor, speaker, or panel is approved by a recognized professional organization or an accredited institution of higher learning.
WAC 246-809-620 names the recognized organizations, and the list includes the National Board for Certified Counselors, the Washington Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, the Washington Mental Health Counselors Association, the Washington Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, among others.
Lovewell Initiatives is an NBCC Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7776, and an AASECT Approved Continuing Education Provider, No. 25-0609-LI. Each clinician is responsible for confirming that their own credential and reporting requirements are met.
What else counts
Employer-sponsored training counts toward your total when it supports your professional development as an LMFT, LMHC, LASW, or LICSW, up to 26 hours per reporting period. Serving on a professional panel or board, community service, research, peer consultation, and publishing in professional journals can count for up to 6 hours per reporting period. Activities aimed primarily at increasing your income or improving office efficiency do not count.
If you develop and deliver CE-eligible instruction yourself, you may claim the same number of hours your participants receive, once per topic per reporting period.
If you are licensed in another state
These requirements apply to your Washington credential. Continuing education you complete for a Washington license may or may not satisfy another state's rules, and the reverse is equally true, since states differ on hour counts, mandated topics, and which approvals they recognize. Lovewell's trainings carry NBCC continuing education hours and AASECT continuing education credits, which many state boards accept, and acceptance is always the individual board's decision rather than the provider's.
Documentation
Keep transcripts, letters from instructors, certificates of completion, or any other formal record confirming you finished the training, per WAC 246-809-650.
Primary sources
Common questions
How many continuing education hours does Washington require to renew?
Thirty-two hours every two years if you are fully licensed as an LMHC, LMFT, LASW, or LICSW. Sixteen hours a year if you are an associate. Both figures changed on October 1, 2025, down from 36 and 18, which is why older pages and several national providers still publish the higher numbers.
Do my roles and boundaries hours also count toward ethics and law?
No. Washington asks for six hours of professional law and ethics and two hours of professional roles and boundaries, and the roles and boundaries hours have to be earned separately. A training can include ethics-related content and still be built to satisfy the roles and boundaries requirement, and the same two hours cannot be counted toward both.
What about the health equity requirement?
Two hours at least once every four years, under WAC 246-12-820 and WAC 246-12-830. It reaches nearly every licensed health profession in Washington rather than clinicians alone, your course does not have to appear on any Department of Health list, and two hours is a floor rather than a fixed number. We keep a separate page on it at Washington's health equity CE requirement, explained, including the two questions the rules leave unanswered.
Does online or self-paced continuing education count?
Yes, and there is no longer a cap on it. WAC 246-809-610 was amended to remove the distance learning limit, and the Department of Health allows continuing education completed online, whether synchronous or asynchronous. Asynchronous programs need to include a test of comprehension.
Does the Department of Health approve continuing education providers?
No, and this is the piece that trips people up. DOH recognizes categories of organizations under WAC 246-809-620 rather than approving individual providers, so no provider can tell you the state has signed off on its courses. Any provider claiming DOH approval is describing something that does not exist.
I am an LICSW or LASW. Does NBCC-approved continuing education count toward my renewal?
Washington licenses social workers under the same statute as mental health counselors and marriage and family therapists, RCW 18.225, and under the same continuing education rules, chapter 246-809 WAC. WAC 246-809-620 lists the organizations whose approval makes a continuing education activity acceptable in a single list, introduced with the phrase include, but are not limited to, and the National Board for Certified Counselors sits on that list alongside the Washington Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, the Washington State Society for Clinical Social Work, and seven others. The rule does not divide the list by profession.
It is worth knowing why this question comes up so often. The Department of Health's own social worker continuing education webpage summarizes a shorter set of recognized organizations and leaves NBCC off it, so a social worker reading that page reasonably concludes NBCC-approved training will not count. The rule text is broader than the summary. Read WAC 246-809-620 directly, and confirm your own requirements with the Department of Health before you renew.
Your social work requirements are otherwise the same as every other credential on this page: 32 hours every two years, including 6 hours of professional ethics and law, 2 hours of professional roles and boundaries taken separately from ethics, 2 hours of health equity every four years, and 6 hours of suicide assessment, treatment, and management every six years.
How do I choose a provider?
Three things are worth checking before you pay. Whether the training names the specific Washington requirement it meets and the rule that requirement comes from, rather than gesturing at ethics in general. Whether the provider publishes an actual approval number, such as NBCC ACEP status, instead of implying approval. And whether the stated hour count matches the time you will really spend in the room, since breaks and registration do not count toward NBCC hours.
Where can I take my professional roles and boundaries hours?
Several Washington providers run this requirement, and most teach it as statute review and disciplinary risk management, which is a legitimate way to cover it and the right fit for some clinicians. Lovewell's version, Professional Roles and Boundaries: Consent, Power, and Practice, teaches the same requirement through consent, power, positionality, and the organizational systems clinicians actually work inside.
The live session runs three hours on Zoom on November 13, 2026, and carries 3 NBCC continuing education hours and 3 AASECT continuing education credits, including ethics-related content. A self-paced version is in production with an estimated launch in Fall 2026, and its credit hours will be published once the finished course is measured.
Lovewell Initiatives, LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7776. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Lovewell Initiatives, LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
Lovewell Initiatives, LLC is an AASECT Approved Continuing Education Provider, Provider No. 25-0609-LI. This program meets the requirements of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) and is approved for 3 CE credits. These CE credits may be applied toward AASECT certification and renewal of certification. Completion of this program does not ensure or guarantee AASECT certification. For further information please contact [email protected]. It is the responsibility of the attendee to determine if their state licensing board will accept AASECT CE credits.
