Transfer Your Counseling License to Rhode Island: Reciprocity & Endorsement (2026)

Rhode Island has passed the Counseling Compact into law, and its board may describe the state as having joined, but as of 2026-10-29 it was not issuing or accepting privileges. That makes Rhode Island a non-compact state in practice: no privilege lets you see a client located here, in person or by telehealth, and a Rhode Island license cannot yet anchor privileges elsewhere. Plan on a Rhode Island license by endorsement, and check the commission's announcements, because states have been switching on every few weeks.

Rhode Island's independent tier is the clinical mental health counselor license (R.I. Gen. Laws 5-63.2-9); the Mental Health Counselor Associate is the supervised tier. Endorsement is discretionary and equivalence-based: the Board may license without examination a counselor licensed in a state whose requirements equal or exceed Rhode Island's, and a 60-hour CACREP clinical mental health counseling degree is deemed equivalent. This is endorsement, not full reciprocity. RIDOH's site (health.ri.gov) returned 403 to automated fetches on 2026-09-27 and the Internet Archive could not return the application PDF, so the application's document checklist (verification forms, supervised-practice forms) and any background-check requirement could not be verified and are omitted. Re-verification 2026-10-29: 216-RICR-40-05-11 (effective 2023-05-15) and the RIDOH fee rule (Clinical Mental Health Counselor application $70, effective 2026-03-25) were re-read on rules.sos.ri.gov and are unchanged; health.ri.gov again returned 403 and the R.I. General Laws site refused connections, so the statute and the RIDOH page keep their 2026-09-27 readings. Rhode Island has enacted the Counseling Compact but is not yet issuing or accepting privileges; compact_member and compact_status are assembler-provided.